Engineering education starts early

It is pointed out that developing more effective technology and preengineering education for grades K-12 in American schools is a major challenge facing society. Meeting this challenge will take bold leadership by engineering professionals and educators who realize that it is important to abandon an educational focus on fact and skill mastery and move to activity-based conceptual learning. All students deserve meaningful instruction in technology. This will require a new way of thinking and abandoning traditional stances and modes of action. It is concluded that instead of tenaciously holding onto present curriculum structures, schools must develop programs that help students explore technology and the ways it is developed, produced, used, and assessed. The structure of a typical technology education program and of a typical technology education class are discussed