I think the business culture damaged the U.S. auto industry. Back in the 1940s through the 1950s automotive men like Ed Cole at G.M. and P.T. Keller at Chrysler had control. When Lynn Townsend, a business type was in charge of Chrysler in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chrysler’s quality declined. A couple of decades later, G.M. replicated Chrysler with Roger Smith at the helm. I hope that the woman who is now CEO at G.M. with her engineering background will turn things around.
The problem isn’t just,limited to the automobile industry. Medical doctors now have to answer to, business types who have no medical understanding. Educators have lost control to business types.
Some years back, I taught a dual level graduate/undergraduate course in computer networking. An area outside my department dumped some graduate students,in this class who lacked the prerequisite computer science courses. Naturally these students could not, do the,work. After most of them failed the first exam, I was told to go easy on tbese students as they needed the course on their transcripts. I responded that they.needed the,knowledge and I wouldn’t certify these students if they couldn’t do the work. I also said that it wasn’t fair to students who came through the math and computer science coursework to give course credit to these other students. I won that battle. I didn’t want our computer science students to have to go out in the job market and have to compete with these students.
Most of us business types from my era were interested in good management, fair treatment of employees, quality products, long term investments in plant and equipment, and even gulp, total quality, etc. but it was those dang accountants that just seemed to take over. Then came short term decisions, cut throat labor relations, and pulling everything of value out before bankruptcy.
I’ll admit though the business schools sure turned out some folks that doomed business in the long run, just not where I came from.
I’m getting off the track again. I’ve always wanted to tour a car plant though and missed my chance in 6th grade to go to the Ford Twin City Assembly plant. (Another story I won’t go into.)
Back then they generated their own power and even made their own glass from the sand by the river. And they assembled cars. Would have been really fun and I’ve never been able to get to one again.
What happened is complicated, lengthy, and involves unions, management acquiescence to unions, American automobile manufacturing arrogance while Japan, starting from scratch after WWII developed modern manufacturing technologies, and other legendary factors like politics and attempts at protective regulation.
I’m a firm believer that American auto manufacturers can build a high quality vehicle…they just choose no to. Short term profitability above all else. It doesn’t matter if they build better vehicles now that 5 years from now they’ll be stronger and making much higher profits. If the profits can’t be seen next quarter…then don’t do it.
From what I remember, Japanese branded cars were crap for quite a while and gained a following, not for their quality, but their economy. The Crown Vic could outlast the Toyota Crown for example. They improved in quality when they built them to American buyer’s standards, specifically for those who wanted a reliable car. It was a marketing decision and not a capacity one.
The only country that has yet to show they can make a quality car with the home grown labor. is France. (just kidding). Everyone in the industrial world, thanks to No. Korea has access to the best technology. (another joke).
I think there is plenty of “know how” in today’s generation, but we don’t bring it out. The students I had at the end of my teaching career in 2011 were just as capable as the students were when I began my teaching career in 1962. What I think is really important is to give physical activity examples of the abstract. For example, to many students Boolean algebra didn’t_mean much. The logiic gates (AND,OR,NOT) were just abstractions that had no meaning. However, once I took a couple of knife switches, a battery and a light bulb and connected the switches in series, we had an AND gate. I mounted this equipment on a board and passed it around the class. I did the same rhing with another board, but this time connected the switches in parallel to represent an OR gate. I had a third board where, with one switch in parallel with the bulb. When the switch was off, the bulb would light but when the switch was on, the bulb went off_(I did put a resistor in the circuit so there wouldn’t be a dead short). These gates are the building blocks of the computer. It was,amazing to me once the students saw the physical example how quickly they could move to the abstract and design circuits.
Unfortunately, I had colleagues that thought this was a waste of time and went immediately to the abstract. As a result, all their students seemed to do was memorize with little understanding. Now I was fortunate to grow up without a lot of money where we did a lot of our own electrical and mechanical work. We did a lot of our car repairs and fixed our own radio and televisions. Even though today’s generation didn’t have that experience growing up that we can’t provide some physical experiences with instead of making everything an abstraction to be memorized. Our present generation is plen
ty bright.
These gates are the building blocks of the computer. It was,amazing to me once the students saw the physical example how quickly they could move to the abstract and design circuits. Unfortunately, I had colleagues that thought this was a waste of time and went immediately to the abstract.
And logic too. With out a grasp of the basic concepts and the workings of any apparatus, machine or concept, your ability to apply it is severely limited. I know in Calculus, we spent a lot of time doing the same physics problems in many different ways. Kids and other teachers though that was a waste of time too. But, only by having a myriad of approaches can you feel like all problems have a solution and have the tenacity to stay with it. The kids appreciated “the basic understanding and application approach” later…and they will always tell you so when you see them again later in life. I remember one student in particular who later became a PA. She was about to stick a needle in my spinal column to inject a dye in my back, prior x-ray before we did as many CAT scans. I turned around and said…“I hope you remembered your math”.
@dagosa I am in agreement with you about doing the application problems in calculus. After I had introduced a,particular concept, I would assign the word problems that had the answers in the back of the textbook and make the student’s assignment due at the next class meeting. Of course the students came to the next class meeting really frustrated. One by one we would take the problems apart and solve them. I would then assign the remaining problems that didn’t have the answers in the book. The students had no trouble with this assignment. In a 10 week quarter, my class would be two chapters ahead of the same class taught by a colleague who wouldn’t do the application problems.
I had a discussion with one of my colleagues in math education. This colleague was a very conservative straight laced older lady. She claimed that the problems in the elementary school books weren’t relevant. She gave the example of Johnny has fifty cents to spend at the candy store. Johnny was,to buy a mixture of gum drops at 5 cents an ounce, jelly beans at 10 cents an ounce and Johnny’s purchase is to have twice as many ounces,of gum drops as jelly beans. She claimed that not only were the prices,out of date, but no modern kid had seen a candy store. I then modernized the problem: Johnny mugs a,little old lady who has,just cashed,her social security check and has $250 to spend on the street. Now a bag of grass costs X per bag and a,rock of coke costs Y. The,mixture is to contain Z times the number of bags as rocks. Now I have made the problem relevant. My colleague was horrified. The point is that solving a,problem is to convert the words to matjematical symbols, manipulate the symbols and convert the result back to words. The setting, whether it is,making a purchase in the candy store or on the street is irrelevant. I maintain that if one is not able to apply mathematics, one doesn’t know mathematics.
When I was a kid quality products came from the USA, Germany, England, Switzerland and Sweden. With respect to cars, the English slid downhill after WWII. Japanese bikes were a joke at that time.
Then, everything changed; the Japanese developed a long term plan, aided by MITI, the Japanese ministry for trade and industry to catch up with the West in manufactured products. Dr. Deming was hired to set standards for measuring quality and the rest is history. The first durable car to compare with the VW Beetle was the Toyota Corona, a sturdy little rear drive car launched in the 60s. By mid 80s Japanese car quality had surpassed US levels.
In 1958 I was in the Camera Club at our university and one of the first to buy a Japanese camera, much to the amusement of my fellow members who had German Rolleicords and Leicas, Swedish Hasselblads, and US Speed Graphics, the standard news camera at that time. I managed to win some prizes with my Japanese “toy”.
In the 1800s, Otto von Bismarck of Germany set out to catch up and surpass the British in industrial achievement. By the First World War they had achieved that goal.
The rest, as they say, is history.
@Triedaq
Absolutely…problem solving goes hand in hand with every concept you teach. With out it, what good is ANY subject matter. @Docnick history illustration shows that. One of the things I enjoyed doing was using math models for stock market and economic trends. As convoluted as they appeared to be, you could develope a math model for them and make some solid predictions, short term. It was cool looking in a trends in a lot of fields. Predicting the future is a skill in high demand and there is nothing like math and a good working knowledge of history and a command of the field your working in to do it. I like your idea of “modernizing” problems too. Relevancy is a great inspirational tool.