[meaty]

Most people who benefit from these sorts of products don't have a firm grasp of math and engineering to start with. Our education sucks in the US. Giving them a helping hand is a terrific way to swell the ranks of STEM professionals and introduce people to solving problems they would never have considered otherwise.

Just teach them engineering! Not pussy foot around and molly coddle them.

[pyre]

Your approach to this comes across as the equivalent of lamenting the state of 'kids these days' because 'back in the day,' if you did something wrong the priest would 'beat some sense into you.'

Some people find the idea of engineering and/or mathematics intimidating. If approached in the right way, it will 'click' for them, or at the very least their fears can be assuaged (allowing them to pursue higher learning). I take two issues with your posts here:

1) From your posts here, your approach sounds like you want to 'beat some engineering fundamentals into them.' You say that you've mentored others, so I can't believe that this is actually your approach, but your posts come across this way. This may be at lease some of the reason that people are reacting the way they are to you.

2) You seem to be lamenting the fact that some people will work on these kits, and never go further with the 'higher learning' aspect. This is to be expected. There will never be a way to convert 100% of those curious into the One True Path of Engineering Enlightenment(tm). At the very least, the people that only dabble will get past the idea that all of this 'technology stuff' is some sort of voodoo magic that the majority of the population seems to believe.

[meaty]

You are correct. I don't "beat" it into them - I spent literally years doing 1:1 with people and providing learning material, defining tasks and milestones and days in the lab.

I want people to react to this because I think the issue requires some consideration. We're losing and compartmentalising knowledge to the point that people have no idea what they're really doing any more.

There is no one true path of engineering enlightenment but there is some magic when someone actually really understands what they're doing.

[voltagex_]

Most people will balk at that though. They may not balk at a noisemaker kit, or a build-your-own-universal remote.