Richard Milne reports that Siemens, Bosch and hundreds of companies in Europe give material and money to kindergartens to try to interest children as young as three in technology and science.
German companies have 95,000 vacancies for engineers and only about 40,000 are trained, according to the engineers’ association. … Starting at school is not good enough – we need to help them to understand as early as possible how things work,” said Maria Schumm-Tschauder, head of Siemens’ Generation21 education programme. (Bold added.)
According to Herrn Josef Winter (of Siements), a board member of the “House of Little Scientists,” mastering any skill requires starting at an early age. We have to begin at the pre-school age, (bold added) awakening children’s’ curiosity for technology and natural science questions and phenomena, encouraging their interest and promoting their talents.
The “House of Little Scientists” playfully promotes the enthusiasm of three- to six-year-old girls and boys for technical and scientific phenomena. The initiative stimulates their interest and curiosity with experimentation and observation!
The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln (IW), on behalf of the “Wissensfabrik – Unternehmen für Deutschland” corporate network, researched which education investments are necessary to be a leader in global competition, and how well these investments ultimately pay off. The results were both impressive and surprising. They showed that qualitative improvements in early childhood education lead to an eight percent rate of return for the state and 13 percent for the economy. The bottom line is simply this: Children, the state and the economy benefit if targeted investment is made in young children’s education and knowledge is promoted.