How to make kids become creators and innovators. By Amir Asor, CEO of Young Engineers

Main ideas, concepts, and lessons

• Critique of traditional schooling

  • The speaker argues that the education system is overly information-based, trying to cram facts into students’ memories.
  • This approach often leaves children tired, frustrated, and likely to forget the material after the class ends.
  • The speaker encourages a shift away from passive learning toward learning that builds lasting engagement.

• Core goal: cultivate engineering curiosity + engineering skills

  • It’s “more important” to develop children’s curiosity about engineering.
  • Children should be equipped with engineering skills that support creation and innovation, not just remembering information.
  • The underlying belief: if children are curious and actively building, learning becomes meaningful and motivating.

• Why early engineering matters (future workforce shift)

  • The speaker claims the job landscape is changing rapidly:
    • New professions emerge (e.g., marketing/communication roles, nanotechnologists, developers, drivers).
    • Automation and a robot-driven future will remove or reduce many existing occupations (examples given: taxi drivers, bankers, insurance agents).
  • Therefore, children must learn how to be part of engineering early, since engineering will increasingly shape society and employment.

• The “extraordinary capacity” of kids

  • A personal anecdote: as a 6-year-old, a girl explained a physics concept (centrifugal/centripetal forces), immediately impressing the speaker.
  • This leads to the lesson that children can understand sophisticated ideas when learning is framed appropriately—and that the speaker’s own schooling may not have been optimized.

• Engineering education should be fun and failure-proof

  • The speaker argues that emphasizing memorization can make learners fear challenges and become vulnerable to failure.
  • With hands-on engineering building blocks, children can “fail” safely—because it’s play, and they learn through experimentation.
  • The goal is to build a positive association between engineering and success/creation.

• Proposed solution: hands-on engineering building blocks

  • The speaker’s company (Young Engineers) uses modular building blocks to teach:
    • Mechanical engineering
    • Electrical engineering
    • Coding/robotics via programmable “bricks”
  • Children learn concepts by manipulating and building real, working devices.

---

Detailed methodology / “how-to” approach presented (hands-on engineering program)

1) Build mechanical engineering concepts with mechanical blocks

• Use kits/building blocks that let children create and modify physical machines (mechanical systems).
• Learning starts from simple to more complex machine ideas, for example:
  • Turning ordinary items into functional machines (e.g., sewing machine → bicycle-like systems; general machine creation).
• Encourage experimentation through imagination-driven use, such as:
  • Using a small motor lifting a much heavier object to demonstrate power/efficiency concepts.
• Key concept demonstrated:
  • The speaker references a principle associated with Archimedes (no “hard limit” in theory; the practical result depends on converting input movement/velocity into work).

2) Teach electrical engineering using conductive components + circuits

• Present electrical parts as intuitive, tangible objects.
• Example tools/components described:
  • A plastic part coated with chrome to make it conduct electricity.
• Electrical learning steps:
  • Create a circuit by connecting:
    • a positive (+) and negative (-) connection (using a battery block)
    • an output device like a light (“light break”)
  • Demonstrate circuit behavior by closing/opening the circuit.
• Add interactivity:
  • Use smart switches such as a sound switch to turn the circuit on/off based on sound.
  • Extend to controlling motors with circuits.

3) Combine mechanical + electrical + computing to enable robotics and coding

• Combine mechanical and electrical building blocks with a computing unit to form programmable robots.
• Introduce “algo bricks” (algorithm + bricks) that teach coding-like logic.
• Programming approach:
  • Children learn coding before reading, using functions and parameters embedded in the blocks.
  • Functions specify what action the robot should do.
  • Parameters specify how the action should be performed (e.g., duration, number of turns, type of action).
• Example coding logic (robot behavior):
  • A “wait” brick pauses until a sensor event occurs.
  • Two parallel execution threads run at the same time:
    • Thread 1: move forward for a set time, then rotate clockwise multiple times.
    • Thread 2: turn on a green light, then turn on a red light.
  • The robot executes these block-defined behaviors to demonstrate parallel actions and event-driven control.

4) Reinforce learning outcomes

• Expected effect:
  • Children’s curiosity about engineering increases dramatically.
• Long-term motivation:
  • The speaker frames this as a pathway for children to become future innovators (e.g., “Newton’s,” “Einstein’s,” innovators).

---

Final lessons / takeaways

• Shift education from memorization toward creation + innovation.
• Teach engineering early because the world is moving toward an engineering-dominant era shaped by automation.
• Hands-on building systems can make learning:
  • engaging,
  • confidence-building (low fear of failure),
  • and effective through real experimentation.
• The speaker advocates for adopting engineering education in all educational systems to improve children’s future.

---

Speakers / sources featured

• Speaker: Amir Asor (CEO of Young Engineers)
• Referenced historical source: Archimedes (mentioned in the context of lifting power/limits)