Readers letters
What makes a hero? A good question. I have noted, during my long career in mechanical engineering, the huge gulf between my "professional" colleagues.
Traditionally, many depended on practical experience and learning on the job. But, with the development of technology, an increasing proportion have depended on education and learning. With the passage of time, a university degree has supplanted the higher national certificate and diploma as the fundamental qualification for employment and professional entry.
Nevertheless, I have never forgotten the contentious argument within the senate of a university, as to whether engineering was a suitable topic for “academic” study. In the 1950s and 1960s, such courses were delegated to associated – if slightly superior – technical colleges.
I also recollect the not infrequent complaints over many years by practicing engineers against the overemphasis on the teaching of mathematics – which some of us regard as an essential tool of the engineer (see Slide Rule by Nevil Shute).
Our profession is as diverse as are most other professions, in population and skill levels, where profession is defined as “an occupation requiring special training in the liberal arts or sciences, especially one of the three learned professions, law, theology, or medicine”. And all the professions have been populated by "practical men" at some stage in their history – consider medicine and dentistry before the 20th century.
Perhaps the key question may be paraphrased in the form: "Think what you can do for your profession, and not what your profession can do for you.”
Would you rather be described as an artisan?
Dr D Morrison, Perthshire
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