While taking apart an old Epson printer this evening, I was reminded of one of the best ways of honing engineering skills: The Teardown.

When you are a child, people say: “He’s always taking things apart.” And it often has a negative connotation. In the adult world, it’s given a more respectable name: Teardown, AKA Reverse Engineering.

The end game is the same: Taking apart an object in order to understand how it works. Then to use that knowledge for your own work. It’s one of the best ways to get hands-on experience in understanding how things work.

As a society, we often bitch about how our children are failing in science. How they don’t know how to build things. And so on. Perhaps more annoying to me is that we seem to fixate on finding the source of the problem–playing the blame game–instead of actually fixing the god damn problem.

Build more schools! Be more involved in your childrens lives! Longer school years! All a bunch of bullshit.

Those who know me know that I’m no fan of formal education. I think it’s pretty much a colossal waste of time for most people. Smart people get stuck in rooms with morons. Mechanically gifted get stuck learning French instead of fabricating machine tools. It’s the Least Common Denominator at its worst.

Anyhow, enough of that rant. You want to teach kids mechanics and engineering? Give them an old piece of equipment, a screwdriver, and LEAVE THEM ALONE.