I REFER to Monday’s article, ‘Boring? ‘Creators’ aim to engineer a cool image’. I would like to offer some observations.Image helps, but is secondary to interest and love of constructive learning. I do not think Albert Einstein was worried that every day was a really bad hair day, or that Stephen Hawking obsesses indefinitely over his physical condition, or that Bill Gates is overly concerned about being chief geek. If they did, I do not think they would have achieved what they did.

That said, of course we would like the new breed of scientists and engineers today not to have to take unnecessary flak over their often perceived social ineptitude. Social ineptitude, I feel, is something more easily ‘corrected’ than the shallowness that may accompany style when it is devoid of substance.

I suspect ‘cool’ to an engineer may have little to do with how he looks, but more to do with the gadgets and high-tech stuff he is involved in researching or creating.

Do not fill young people’s heads with too much nonsense like how they have to look cool. Sell the cool ideas they work with. Teach them to see that you can make money and be rich only if you have something worth selling, and that is where engineers come in.

Years ago, engineering was the top school to go to.

Today, everyone wants to be in business and make money and that is why our young flock to anything and everything to do with business, finance and economics.

But the truth is in the statistics. Top engineers, like anyone at the top of the game, stand to make a lot of money, and in the long run, engineering may be a more sustainable career.

It is good to get parents and educators to promote engineering as a good, solid higher education and career choice and encourage the young to go in that direction.

I know of a recent case where on the release of A-level results, some students were agonising that their results might get them only half a foot in a business-related faculty in the universities.

Some of these students were extraordinary maths and science students. When gently prodded in the direction of engineering, the looks on their faces! They appeared as if they had just had an epiphany. They claimed they had never thought of engineering as a worthwhile choice.

There are numerous young people I know who did two or three science papers and one or two maths papers at S level (old syllabus), who took up scholarships only to opt for the softer options.

At the recent Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development annual conference in Orlando, Florida, a speaker mentioned Singapore’s notable 67 per cent of high school (junior college) graduates who were maths- and science-inclined, one of the highest in the world.

But sadly, the real issue and loss is what happens to the 67 per cent after they leave high school. It seems bizarre that one struggles so hard to do maths and science in school, only to drop them when it really counts. Why opt for maths and science in the first place?

Helen Ng (Ms)