Here is a sampling of letters we've received regarding recent articles in PME, but didn't have the space to print.
Engineers and Terrorism
I write this as a professional engineer with a background in helping and training younger people from schoolchildren to mature graduates. The war against terrorism, in my view, should involve richer nations assisting poorer nations in developing their own resources, including water supply, sanitation, electricity, communications, etc. These things we take for granted in "developed" countries. It seems natural to us that we can eat fresh food, grow crops, rear animals, turn on a tap to get hot or cold water, flush a toilet, switch on a light, turn on a TV, heat or cool our houses, keep food fresh in fridges and freezers, pick up a phone, drive to another city, cross a bridge, take a plane ride, and so on. Almost everything that we take for granted comes with engineering. A major exception may be medicine, but that too involves engineering to a great degree.
Science and engineering continue to evolve rapidly, especially in the high technology areas. However, the fundamentals of water supply and disposal, irrigation and power generation are not widespread in many other countries. Hence, the lives of many other peoples are very dissimilar to ours. Poverty and hunger are commonplace in many areas of the world where education in engineering is lacking. Give a man a fish, and he can feed himself for a day; teach him to fish and he can feed his family forever.