1. How to face the declining interest of young people in technical fields
Point to discuss at the FEANI Central European Group
CSVTS, Prague, September 19, 2016
Daniel Hanus

2. Numbers of graduates at higher education institutions in the Czech Republic in 2015
All Higher Education Institutions – (100%)
Technical universities – (23%)
Medical degree programs (5%)
Natural sciences and pedagogy degree programs – 9960 (12%)
Humanities, economy and management degree programs – (60%)
The majority of graduates in the non technical fields - 60%
Technical fields only 23%,
but the purely engineering degree programs less than 20%

3. Demographic curves in the Czech Republic and Germany – declining population!

4. Why young people are not attracted by technical subjects and engineering
Have very little information about „machines“
Parents are less and less familiar with sciences and technologies
The same concerning teachers in kindergartens
Rather limited offer of good books for children with technical content
Very few really good and enthusiastic teachers in primary and secondary schools teaching mathematics, physics, chemistry and other technical subjects
Quite demanding character of technical subjects
Lack of good and positive publicity of engineering jobs and their interestingness and prosperity

5. What we are doing to change this trend
Kindergartens at technical universities
Children „technical universities“ organized by universities in the form of children‘s summer camps
Secondary school pupils technical projects, their presentation and competitions organized in cooperation of schools, CSVTS and their partners AMAVET and STRETECH
Open doors for children organized by technical universities and academy of sciences
Technical museums for young people – Techmania in Pilsen, Ostrava
International competition of children‘s scientific and technical projects – collaboration of CSVTS and BAST (Beijing Association for Science and Technology) supported by Chinese Embassy in Prague

6. Kindergarten of the Czech Technical University in Prague – Lion Cubs

7. Children‘s Technical University of the Czech Technical University in Prague

8. Children‘s Technical University of the Czech Technical University in Prague

9. Open door for youngsters organized by the Czech Aerospace Society (I am the President)

11. Despite this efforts the results are not yet sufficient Why
Despite this efforts the results are not yet sufficient Why? What we can do better and more efficiently?
According to the research of children‘s motivations and heading
Cardinal role plays – mother!
So it is necessary focus our effort to help mothers as well as fathers to motivate their kids more to technical and scientific fields with significant help of beautiful books with stories of suspense from early age till kindergarten age
According to the survey done in this domain we have found that there is not sufficient offer of children‘s books with a technical and scientific content on the market

12. How we can contribute to get more attractive children’s technical books on the market?
To learn from the best practices of our colleagues – FEANI members
To learn from the best practices of our international partners, Engineers Australia, CAST, and so on
To join our effort in this matter and collect best books in each country and to assure their translation to our national languages
To submit a project to the European Commission to be funded as a FEANI project

13. Examples of some technical children‘s books

16. This book contributed significantly to my later interest to machines and finally to a decision to study engineering
My first image of an engineer
Locomotives designer
Wizard Zababa