The subject matter in our school systems, however, certainly does not reflect this. Not only would a curriculum that includes the study of engineering reflect today's society as a whole, but it would also coincide with many current practices in the education world. Looking at educational philosophy through the lens of engineering design offers many connections between the goals and methods of engineering and the goals and methods of education. An entire article could be written on these connections. In his article in this same issue, Roger Schank discusses the need for students to think about questions that have multiple answers, as opposed to circling the answer to a multiple choice question.
Engineering is a discipline that provides such open-endedness.
However, like medicine, which Schank discusses, engineering has also been left out of the traditional Liberal Arts curriculum. Perhaps, like medicine, engineering has been left out because of the infrastructure. More and more, however, schools of all levels are beginning to pick up engineering as a field of study. We need to approach the redesign of the educational system as a whole as an engineer would approach a design problem. This does not mean, however, that the educational system should be something that is imposed upon the schools from the outside.