13 March 2004

Are You Missing Something Or Am I?

One of the many aspects of my job is that I am the person chosen to train all the new mechanics when they are first hired.

I don’t have a problem with training something. I taught electronics in high school so I have a small amount of experience teaching things, and I find that I rather enjoy it. Besides which it makes a pleasant departure from the regular daily grind that is part and parcel of being a Pinsetter Mechanic.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, so I should probably qualify what I’ve said. I do, in fact, enjoy teaching and have no problem with my job as designated trainer. I like things best when my student catches on to what I’m trying to show him right away, but I don’t mind having to work for that a little. After all, we are talking about complex machines that have been known to develop minds of their own at times. A certain amount of hesitation and confusion is to be expected.

But what do you do with someone who just doesn’t seem to get the point?

It isn’t all that hard to grasp what it is that we do. We’re mechanics. When something breaks we diagnose the problem and then we fix it. Of course, this requires a certain amount of machine knowledge and a certain amount of troubleshooting skill, coupled with some observational skills and, on occasion, a healthy portion of blind luck.

I wrote the training program that we use. It’s based on the same training method that was used on me when I took the job, but I’ve made a few changes to make some things a little easier to understand. When training a new mechanic I teach him the basics of how our pinsetters work, I teach him some machine details, and I teach him some troubleshooting skills. This is the difficult part of the training program. The easy bit is the rest of the course, when we’re just trying to teach him how to clean and maintain the machine without getting himself killed.

One would think that with the foundation of machine knowledge and troubleshooting training given in training, along with access to a complete library of technical information on these machines, a prospective mechanic would have everything that he would need to diagnose most of what’s going to happen and be able to fix it just enough that the machine is going to be able to continue operating for the rest of the night. I call it meatball mechanics, because we tend to do a lot of improvisation.

Of course, that would be true in an ideal world and this is nothing like an ideal world. There are other factors that complicate the issue as well. Some people have learning disabilities of one kind or another that make it difficult for them to take in new information, so in order to teach them anything you have to figure out how to get around their particular disability, assuming that they even know they have it and are willing to talk to you about it. And the simple fact is that some people just aren’t cut out to be a mechanic, and the finer concepts of machine knowledge and troubleshooting just go right over their heads. They may think that they understand what’s going on in training, but when it comes time to apply that knowledge on the machine they’re a lot like a fish out of water.

Sometimes people will claim to understand the material when they really don’t, just for the sake of not holding up the training program. It never occurs to them to think that I don’t really care how long it takes me to train you, as long as you really and truly understand what’s going on when I’m done.

The problem with lack of understanding caused by a learning disability and a lack of understanding caused by a simple lack of understanding is that they are indistinguishable from my point of view and I rely heavily on feedback from the student to ensure that everything is hunky dory (that’s a small Ukrainian fishing boat, a Hunky Dory). More often than not I don’t get that kind of feedback, I just get the answers that I expect to hear.

So, given the kind of problems that I’m having at work of late I now have to start asking myself some questions about my training methods. I have to start wondering if I am the problem, or if the student is the problem. And given these rather senseless bursts of self-honesty I’ve been experiencing lately (I don’t know why I’m getting them now, I never asked for them) I actually find myself taking this question seriously.

I am quick to come to my own defense by noting that the methods I use are tried and true. I am patient and exacting in my explanations, using material from our own technical references to back me up. Every time I explain an assembly to the student a part of that lecture takes place on the actual machine, so the student can see the assembly in question in action. The lecture portions of the training course are reinforced in the student through the use of constant quizzing. The items I reinforce during lecture are determined by the student’s answers on the quiz. I am something of an evil bastard during the troubleshooting phase of the training, but there is a method and madness to my cruelty. The machines are unforgiving themselves, as are our bowlers, and I believe that the student should get used to these things during training, rather than being faced with them on his first watch.

Kind of sounds a lot like some of the teachers we had in school, doesn’t it?

Indeed, I have come to wonder if modern schools are not at the heart of this problem.

Consider the following: The primary focus of modern education is on academic skills, and rightfully so. In order to be able to survive in this world a person needs to be able to read and write the English language with a certain amount of skill, a person needs to be able to perform mathematical calculations, often in their heads, and a person needs a basic understand of history, and of the political and social realities of the world in which they live. All of these are academic skills, but there is more to well-rounded education than academics.

The high school I attended had a very strong trades program. That’s why I went there, because I couldn’t stomach straight academics without something else to help me wash it down. I took electronics and drafting, and a number of things I learned in both of those classes have held me in good stead for most of the last fifteen years. I have knowledge of tools and how to use them. I am confident enough in my manual dexterity that I believe I am capable of fixing anything I put my mind to.

Alas, the high school I attended has virtually shut down its trade programs in favor of a change in learning format to a more student driven education. Of course, all of the basics are still covered, for the government insists that certain academic requirements must be met in order to earn a diploma, but for the most part the student decides what they are going to learn, and when. Inasmuch as I can see certain advantages to this kind of approach, I have to wonder if this is really something that has to be done. It almost seems as if we are relieving our teachers of the job of teaching.

Consider this too: not a month goes by where we’re not hearing about teacher’s unions complaining to the school boards, and the school boards complaining to the government, about more money and smaller class sizes. Instead of taking a good hard look at whether or not the teachers they employ or the methods they follow are truly effective, the educational system falls back on some tired old statistics that they believe govern whether or not a teacher can be effective in a particular classroom situation. Why are they doing this, you ask? They’re doing it because somewhere down the line someone got the bright idea to turn education into a science, and our educational system has been going to hell in a hand basket ever since.

It seems as if our children were receiving a better education back before we decided to turn education into a science. Classroom sizes were not an issue. The teacher dealt with several grades at once in a single room, relying on their own ingenuity and their authority over the class to get the point across, and students learned. Kids walked out of those schools knowing how to read and write and do math. They walked out of those schools knowing a smattering of history and social politics.

Now teachers have next to no control over their students. If there is so much as a single extra body in the class above and beyond the theoretical optimum class size then the teacher is suddenly unable to do his job. Students are walking out of high school less educated than they were fifteen or even thirty years ago.

What does this have to do with training new mechanics? Simple, it’s just one more hurdle that I have to jump to turn some guy off the street into someone who is capable of standing watch without letting the place burn down around him. And again, it’s a case where learning difficulties imposed by the educational system are indistinguishable from a learning disability.

Either way it all adds up to the same thing; In order to train a mechanic I have to adjust my methods for each and every class that comes through my shop to suit the individual student, which is exactly what I’ve been trying to do anyway. Nothing has changed; we just have more reasons for it than we did before.

The real problem is that I don’t think the modern education system can be fixed without tearing it down to the foundation and then building it back up. But that would cost time and money, neither of which the government is willing to spend without attaching some bureaucracy to the project that would only run up the cost of doing it. Besides which, they would just screw it up.

Bureaucracy is the only known form of life with six or more legs and no brain.