I have three children. One boy and two girls. They range in age from 20 to 35 years old. All of them have flown. None of them are pilots. None of them work in the aviation industry. They’re all aviation enthusiasts, however. I count that as a big win.
My youngest is a hairdresser, if that’s still the proper term. She cuts and colors and generally tweaks the tresses of women in our region. She enjoys it. She’s good at it. Yet she will occasionally engage me in conversation about aviation or aerospace, especially in the historic sense. She’s particularly intrigued by Sputnik 2, which sent Laika the space dog where no living thing had been before. That fascinates my daughter.
My girl is unusual in her friend group in that she knows a fair amount about aviation and space flight. That is almost certainly because she is the granddaughter of an airline pilot, the daughter of a general aviation pilot, and a native of Florida. She’s been watching spacecraft blast into orbit since before she can remember.
She’s not a pilot, but she knows how to fly, and she’s an avid enthusiast. She’s pro-aviation. In that respect she’s very similar to her older sister and brother.
Here in my part of the world, public schools are about to begin filling up with students again. My local high school begins classes next week. Teachers reported for work this week to prep the classrooms, gather supplies, check their lesson plans, and generally brace themselves for the onslaught of teenagers who will stream through their doors in just a matter of days.
This year is different than previous years, however. At least that’s true for my local high school. For the first time ever, Winter Haven Senior High School will be providing students with an elective STEM course that uses aviation as a tool and a motivator to improve outcomes. Yes, high school students will now be exposed to aviation in a positive light through their full four years of high school.
Maybe the reason I find this so exciting and encouraging is my own experience getting into aviation. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t quick. And it sure wasn’t cheap. But it could have been all of those things if I’d had more support and less resistance in my younger years.
My interest in aviation began young, but I had been led to believe that all pilots were military or former military. That made sense to me since all the pilots I knew were either flying for the National Guard or the airlines after finishing their time with the U.S. Air Force or Navy.
When ultralights came along in the early 1970s, I was fascinated. I bought books and magazines featuring those wonderful, simple machines. There was a hang-glider company in my town. They taught fledgling pilots to fly on a hill not far from my home. I was in, ready to go. I couldn’t wait to get airborne. Then my dad made it clear I wasn’t going to be flying anything so flimsy as a hang-glider.
In retrospect, I understand his reticence. He’d flown fighters for the Air Force and freighters for the Guard. At that point he was flying B-747s in a Pan Am uniform. Hang-gliders looked awfully shaky to him. I get it.
When the U.S. Navy recruiter came to my high school, I asked to be excused from class to sit in on his presentation. The idea of being a Navy pilot appealed to me. Unfortunately, as a long-haired hippy kid with a profound fascination with rock music, my geometry teacher didn’t see me as a viable candidate for flight school and said so.
“You’re never going to be a pilot,” she said as she denied my hall pass.
I didn’t get into a cockpit until 10 years later. While going through the process of learning to fly, I saw the drop-out rate up close. I saw what happens to people who are discouraged by family and friends rather than supported and encouraged. Of the dozen students in my ground school class, I was the only one to actually book a flight. The result was one pilot and 11 discouraged wannabes. That’s not a promising ratio.
Today, there’s real hope. When the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) first began offering the high school STEM curriculum, a handful of schools were chosen to put the program into a real-world testing environment. Having a curriculum is one thing. Verifying that it works is something else entirely. Thankfully, it did.
Last year there were more than 70 high schools using the program. This year that number nearly doubled. And these are early days.
The number of school administrations who see these successes, recognize the value of aviation-related STEM education, adopt the curriculum, and begin exposing their students to a field of study that can lead to high value employment opportunities will certainly grow from here on out.
What the kids do is participate. The exact thing my peers and I were prevented from doing when we were in school, today’s kids will be encouraged to do. They’ll learn more about piloting than most adults know. They’ll be exposed to drone technology and develop insight into what the future of aviation might look like. They’ll be ready to go on to the next step — and isn’t that what education is really about — getting students prepped to continue climbing the ladder that will lead them to their own personal version of success.
I’m stoked. This school year is going to be amazing. That’s not quite how I felt about school during the last week of summer when I was a teenager. But maybe if I knew I was going to be in classes that were going to teach me to fly and operate drones, my whole attitude might have changed for the better. Yeah, I think that’s probably true.
I think it’s AWESOME that programs like this are available to students now. From what I remember, I had NOTHING remotely close to this back when I was in high school. About the ONLY thing I was enjoying, were my negative thoughts/fantasies of rebellion. Didn’t get me very far. In about 6 years, my grandson starts high school. Hopefully, these programs will still be around for him.
I have been in the aviation business for over 50 years. I started as an flight instructor in J-3s and progressed to charter and corporate flying. Than in the early 70s the bottom fell out as due to the fuel problem. I was laid off of my corporate flight position. That’s when an FAA inspector advised me I could apply to the FAA for a flying position as I was a disabled veteran and could open FAA registers for flying positions. I did and I was hired in 1975. I spent 28 years as an FAA Aviation Safety Inspector (ops). Enjoyed every minuet except for investigating aircraft accidents. I retired in 01 and do not fly now but before I retired I taught my oldest grandson the fly and he now has his private pilot certificate and continues to fly recreationally. I have a grad school near my home here in FL, and thought I may ask the principle about the possibility of presenting a short lesson on flying for a living. Any thoughts on this???
Very Important for Middle School and High School guidance counselors to be aware of the impact of recommending ADHD drugs to “calm” excited or “over-active” boys – even when there is NO evidence of ADHD true diagnosis. Having any of the drugs on a student’s medical records will automatically deny them the FAA medical.
This can be overcome, but it takes several expensive medical and psychological tests, and the RIGHT FAA familiar doctor to get a waiver for such a student – I know this from direct personal experience.
[Actual diagnosis was – “This kid NEVER had ADHD – who in heck made this prescription?!?] About $3,000 out of pocket and three months delay in getting to their check ride. OBTW – he is an excellent pilot.
Wow can I ever concur with this!! As an adult with an extremely minor mental illness (no meds, no therapy),all I will ever be qualified for is LSA. Having any mention of a mental illness is an almost immediate no go according to every single AME I’ve spoken to, no exceptions. You were lucky in getting a waiver, most do not get one and thus endith their quest for becoming a private pilot. Thankfully they can still fly ultralights if they failed or LSA if they did their homework and found out about the instant fail BEFORE they applied for a medical….but these standards are woefully outdated and need serious updating….but it’s always falling of deaf ears as mental illness is a buzz word signalling doom from the FAA and until more training on their part is done it’s going to stay that way.
While I get that any aviation training is good….learning about drones doesn’t seem like the right way to do it to me. Most states don’t even allow drone flying anywhere near a city/airport, further discouraging kids/adults from actually being exposed to GA. Lets face it: flying drones safely from the comfort of a lawn chair on the ground does not a pilot make. Just my humble opinion here, feel free to disagree.
Michael,
The University of Maine at Augusta will be starting this fall an aviation program for 4 high schools in Maine. It will be done remotely with the high schools allowing a single instructor to teach at multiple locations at once. We’re starting off with a Part 107 certificate program. This certificate program teaches the remote pilot pretty much all of the ground school information for a private pilot minus the navigation training. Many of the high schools are within 5 miles of an airport, but so far all of the airports are your typical non-controlled airport. The airports have Class G airspace over them up to 700 AGL and none require a LAANC authorization in order to fly within the 5 NMR of the airport. Needless to say, we teach all remote pilots they are at the bottom of the list of priority in the air and MUST yield to all manned aircraft plus stay away from the runway environment. Our students/new remote pilots don’t even want to be near an airport since it will require them to watch out for aircraft and land if there is any possible conflict.
So in my humble opinion, teach folks how to fly drones safely and that introduction to flying starts them down the road to becoming a Part 61/91 pilot. And they can possibly earn some money for the follow-on flight training.
Drones are only a small part of the mentioned AOPA curriculum, but it is a great way to get students introduced to aviation. And the drone subject matter does continue into commercial (Part 107) drone certification for those students who want to pursue it.
You make an interesting point, Michael. I’d like to suggest however, there is a bigger picture to consider when it comes to drones. Just as a C-152 is a perfectly reasonable machine to use to begin a pilot’s career that may one day find him or her in the left seat of a wide-body airliner, the quad-copter a group of teenagers are exposed to in high school could lead to a career that pilots drones across oceans on intercontinental missions. That’s already happening. The key is to use these low-cost, highly accessible machines to teach the basics. To help kids understand the underlying technologies. To show them how the airspace system works to accommodate a variety of aircraft all over the world in a 3 dimensional environment.
From small things, great things come. That’s as true for drones and drone pilots as it is for any other technology or product.
Good points, all….but again, drones are not accessible to a huge number of folks of any age due to strict regulations around our most populous areas and therefore are a very limited way to get started off. I work with youth on a pretty large scale and most if not all could care less about aviation in general and drones aren’t even a thought due to said restrictions (the fines are really high around these parts[NYC]).
I’d love for this to work as I’ve seen some pretty cool things you can do with drones….but having to drive nearly 100 miles away from the city to even think about using one is a pretty darn good deterrent from ever doing so. Sadly the same applies to flying model airplanes, same restrictions, same deterrent. As for doing it on university grounds, that’s a great way to start them off…but then they leave there, get a job in any city, and that ends it. Like I said, not a good way to do it. Sometimes the old fashioned way is the best way, and I take kids to a smaller regional airport and let them just take in what it’s all about. Some care, others could care less, but it’s a start. I also am an avid Xplane user and have a pretty nice setup that also allows them access to what it can really be like to fly and I’ll buy a yoke and peddles for the ones most interested to help them along there.
There are plenty of modern ways to do this and while I love the AOPA way personally, I don’t see it really pushing aviation on anyone in a real, meaningful way due to not having broad acceptance outside of a classroom. More needs to be done, and soon, or GA really is doomed.