ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Engineering
Clip 5 - Lack of Mentors: We don’t see very many mentors in the process - you don’t see very many black
scientists, in operation, and that’s also true of black airline pilots. How many do you see? They’re out there, but
you don’t see that many, by any stretch of the imagination, but they are there. You know, the visibility makes
a difference and that’s why I mention, through my scouting experience, in terms of my aviation post, that’s
where I was exposed to black pilots for the fi rst time. So I could talk to people fi rsthand, what’s the experience
of fl ying? The kids really don’t have the opportunity to fully understand and comprehend what engineering is.
And engineering, like anything else, is nothing more than language. It’s a way of bringing a concept into being,
except it’s done through formulas as far as that goes. Kids say “Well, I can’t do math.” I can tell them, “Yes you
do, because you use money when you go shop for this, that and the other thing. You guys do math all the time,
and math is a universal language, no matter where you go.” It’s one that’s well understood. But it’s just, we
have made math a mystery.
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