Commentary on: “The greening of engineers: A cross-cultural experience” (A. Ansari)

Professor Ansari’s “The Greening of Engineers” makes a persuasive argument for increased emphasis on the environment in the engineering curriculum. I want to first draw out two conclusions from his experiences which, while implicit in what he says, may bear further emphasis. Then I want to make some positive suggestions regarding the diff icult and important problem he raises. The first conclusion is that, if Professor Ansari’s experiences are representative, there does not appear to be much difference between American and Indian students in attitudes towards environmental matters. If anything, Professor Ansari’s Indian students were even less concerned with environmental issues, because they believed rapid technological development is necessary for the well-being of their country. This suggests that the generally low level of sympathy with environmental considerations among many engineering students may be due more to the attitudes of the type of student drawn to engineering and to the engineering curriculum itself than to any cultural differences between students in the United States and other parts of the world. Engineering attracts students who are analytically and quantitatively oriented and who tend to be more comfortable with limited problems, situated within parameters that are often not questioned. This orientation does not lend itself to the kind of global thinking characteristic of environmentalism. Engineering education itself, furthermore, is not attuned to the issues that would make students sensitive to environmental issues, due to its lack of emphasis on the li fe sciences in general and ecology in particular. The second conclusion is that the “technothink” paradigm that Professor Ansari finds deeply rooted in the engineering curriculum and in the thinking of engineering students is not easily displaced. “Technothink” is associated with classical physics and sees the world as a machine whose parts can be manipulated independently of each