Is a bias showing?
 

Did anyone notice that non-STEM fields got slightly dissed during Kickoff? Dean mentioned that technology moves fast, other fields move slowly (e.g. Romeo and Juliet = West Side Story). Was it Jon Dudas who gave the example of someone who gave up acting for technology, and went from portraying someone important to being someone important?

I'm sure any slight was unintentional. But we have to watch our biases, which tends to come out in comments like this.

Yes, technical careers can lead to great advancements for humankind. But I'd much rather be part of a well-rounded world that includes actors, writers, musicians and artists. They make the rest of life interesting.

Re: Is a bias showing?
 

What I thought was funny/backhanded was Dean talking about how we needed the entertainment industry to help make FIRST more recognizable and then the head of NASA dissed the whole industry by saying we are people doing good work while they are just pretending to be people doing good work.

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Dean being Dean.

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I noticed it too. As someone who is/has been involved with a lot of non-STEM activities over the years, I was a little annoyed at that. They could have said "technological fields are some of the fastest-moving and -developing areas, and we have to keep up with the demand" and not brought other fields into it at all.

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Art kids like me are always on the tail end of the FIRST food line, but then again FIRST's main goal is to inspire and recognize Science and Technology so we should expect this.

Then again I went into Industrial Design so I have the best of both worlds.

If it was FIRSTAD... (science, technology, art and design)

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I call the Animation contest the illegitimate child of FIRST. You never hear Dean give it any love and it doesn't help that every year they have a challenge that has absolutely nothing with what FRC is doing.
To be fair the Chairman's award doesn't have alot to do with the engineering challenge of FIRST as it has more to do with community building to get the community to embrace technology which often falls to the responsibility of the PR on the team (the engineers are kinda busy slapping together a competitive robot) and Dean reps the Chairman's award all the time.

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We can't have a functioning society without either. I too have felt slighted over the years (I'm a business major but I'm good at strategy, analyzing, marketing, scouting, design, etc but I'm not an engineer) by how it can seem all about engineering math and science but I feel that what FIRST teaches can be applied to any field you are in. It did feel like a disconnect but FIRST can't control what everyone says. Even in the room at kickoff the applause for Colbert was much louder than that for the head of NASA.

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Just because Dean doesn't like celebrities or sports doesn't mean everyone else is FIRST feels the same way.

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A lot of the people I work with (at a technology company) are talking about steAm where the A stands for art. Art is important and it is losing ground in a lot of schools along with engineering. Few things get dissed in schools as much as computer science does though - in my biased opinion.

I think that larger concern though is people going into easy majors for which there is a shortage of jobs while ignoring the harder STEM courses for which there are jobs but a shortage of people to take them. It's a real problem.

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I never said that.

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I love the concept of STEAM, and definately noticed the bias. Maybe I'm oversensitive, as a NEMO mentor who was in high school and still is a self-proclaimed musical theater geek (and proud of it!) But my daughter, in her first year on our FIRST team (although she's been dragged around to competitions, build sessions, community events, etc. since she was 5) is both a devoted FIRSTer whose favorite subjectes in school are math and science, she is also a professional actress, having just finished touring in Disney's Mary Poppins. I think she's a great example of how the arts and science can and should co-exist. Both are equally important in a civilized society. Plus, studies have shown that students participating in music programs do better in math and science.

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I know. Just making a point that even people in FIRST still get starstruck like everybody else. No matter how much we talk about changing the culture we're all still enamored with it. I think Dean finally realized it and brought in celebrities to help because he realized much as it pained him he needed the help to get the message out faster.

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I agree its been a long day, I couldn't tell where you stood for a second there. :o

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I tweeted about this earlier and was told I was wrong. It's bothered me for a long time. I really don't like how much he hates everything from athletes to the arts. It seems very pompous, especially considering most pro athletes have completed more college coursework than Dean Kamen himself who dropped out. Pau Gasol went to medical school and James Franco has 3 masters degrees and is in two phd programs. They're not stupid people. They are also incredibly talented and there is no problem, in my opinion, with kids looking up to them.

It's important for FIRST to present students with the idea that STEM is good and fun and whatnot, but I think the message they send is "We are smarter and better than you so we are more valuable to society in the long run."

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The problem is we're presented with so many images and stories of dysfunctional, selfish and ill mannered athletes and celebrities that they make easy targets for Dean to bash on. Obviously they are not all like that.

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Just because they're easy targets doesn't mean Dean needs to poop all over them every year.

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As I said earlier: It's Dean being Dean

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I'm really chuckling here. I'm thinking of a discussion in a NEMO meeting when I spent a few minutes talking to new mentors about the importance of recruiting from art, music, English, theater tech, drama, and business classes in the teams' schools. My ending comment in that discussion was something like, "It only makes sense, doesn't it?" I'm chuckling at the raised eyebrows that suggestion brought about, initially.

We have a bridge this year. To succeed in utilizing its potential, the teams literally have to find a balance. That's part of the game challenge, true, but it is also true in managing a team of quality and excellence. Many teams know that, instinctively, while others have to learn to appreciate diverse talents and skills and then utilize them productively. People are not so different from teams or game challenges, really.

Jane

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I think most people in FIRST get it, but it doesn't seem like the big shots do.

Re: Is a bias showing?
 

Teams work very very hard. They are on the ground, figuring it out. Teams deal with challenges, difficulties, and constraints on a regular basis - sometimes year after year. Their focus and intent is to grow a team well and to help their students develop their potential, find their dream, and go for it. The teams often have a very deep passion about inspiration and work hard to have their efforts recognized.

The FIRST leaders have different passions, viewpoints, concerns. Sometimes, there is a disconnect. That's ok - if it is bad enough, they'll figure it out. Growing pains are called growing pains for a reason. And... nobody is perfect. But... don't let anyone rain on your parade. :)

Jane

Re: Is a bias showing?
 

I've heard the last few speeches by Dean too. I think this one was taken a bit out of context.

What I got was that science and technology are moving fast, as in changing quickly, while art changes more slowly. This may or may not be true, but I didn't get the feel that this was meant as a comparison of worth.

I agree that the average sports icon or singer is reasonably likely not going to be an outstanding role model as I'm sure most of us could easily see. The fact that kids idolize people who's life is about sex and drug use over people who really make positive changes in the world.

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Dean's just really passionate. People get a little blinded by their passions.

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I think Alexa is spot on here.

I feel like Dean has a huge disconnect with how the many many people (students and mentors) have differing views on sports, entertainment, and STEM mixing into a very cool culture and world. I for one hate the pompous things Dean says sometimes, even if they are unintentional. He needs to be conscious of what he says.

I like the part where so many claim this as fact. This is not a fact. When you think of entertainment legends, do you realize the amount of philanthropy these people take part in using their successes? Just because the philanthropy may involve music education and education in the arts, people in STEM are quickly blinded.

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Personally I find there to be biases in everything advertising. FIRST is obviously trying to push STEM fields of study, so they're gonna talk up the hype. And that's great! I think we need it a lot more in the world. Now if it seemed to be boreder-line "bashing" other fields of study, one could see that, but I'm sure that wasn't their intention. They just want to push the techie majors!

Although I do like the idea of STEAM!

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256 is now pro-STEAM! We have people in the arts involved in robotics, and they love it! :D They were a little offended from what Dean said, but from what they learned from FIRST, they've all decided to prove him wrong by integrating what they've learned from robotics to improve their specified fields, while promoting science and technology. :)

Nobody on 256 is mad at Dean, it was more like "Challenge Accepted".

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I think there's a huge point that was missed here: this was Dean's Westwind speech, taped. His Westwind talks are always a little more edgy than that which he gives at competition - he even throws in an old lawyer joke or two. Is that what I would have chosen as THE Dean speech to show at Kickoff? Probably not. Would I have thought of that beforehand? Probably not.

In the end, as the first fully televised kickoff...I give them a pass.

Good on you for handling it that way! Keep us posted on how it goes.

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My whole attitude towards the kickoff speech is "eh, he still doesn't understand the nation's true problem". If Dean would ever speak and truly listen to teachers who aren't in FIRST, he'd have a different perspective I think.

Sport & the arts aren't our nation's problem. Our nation's problem is parenting complacency: parents seem to expect schools to teach their kids work ethic. I state this not from a FIRST perspective, but from a perspective of a guy who has had 7 roomates in the past who are (or were for a few years) elementary or middle school teachers. Parents need to teach (constantly, all the time) their kids that the only way for 99% of people to get what they want in this nation is to work hard at whatever they want to do. It's been that way for 100's of years.

Even so, FIRST is still the best organization that can take kids with existing interest/motivation and turn them into better problem solvers.

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Actually, we kind of can.

There's already plenty of art, movies, etc out there that's already been made. If people want to make more art, then good for them, they should do whatever they like to do most. But even if art was suddenly not taught in schools, people could still find creative outlets. I hate art classes and such, but I still like drawing and stuff sometimes. Yet improving technology does more good for the rest of the world, and it absolutely needs strong organization and funding if kids are going to learn it. Are there private art schools? Yes. Private music lessons? Yes. Are there private technology schools? No. If technology isn't taught in schools then many students won't be able to learn it anywhere else.

So if we didn't put government funding into art, we would still be a functioning society. If technology education stopped, however, we'd be in DEEP trouble come 15 or 20 years.

There's art programs in public schools, and that's fine, but STEM should always get equal or better emphasis. I don't care if there's kids who don't know how to play a musical instrument or play a sport, but I do care if we have a generation of people who don't know how to use a multimeter, or don't know the difference between a Philips and a flathead screwdriver, or would believe you if you said that dihydrogen monoxide was a dangerous chemical that should be banned. That's what Dean Kamen's working towards, and few things are more noble.

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Our team has only ever won four trophies: one for innovation, and three for artistic merit, basically. We have as much value placed on students who contribute to costume design and "theme-ing" as we do our programmers and mechanicals. Not that we don't love and appreciate our young engineers; of course we do, this is FIRST. But there are so many kids who stand hesitantly outside the room and think they don't have any thing to contribute because they "aren't good at math", and we want them to join and feel that it is their robot, too. It's gratifying to read that there are many more teams out there who appreciate the contributions of students interested in the arts.

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Quote: "Are there private technology schools? No."
Actually, there are, and public ones too. My own kids attend the Denver School of Science and Technology. It happens to be a couple blocks away from the Denver School of the Arts, and they are the #1 and #2 schools in the city in test scores, graduation rate, and kids ready for college.

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Actually, we kind of can't.

But we need more. See, Dean got art wrong. It's changing just as fast as technology is, if not faster. He's right that we constantly reiterate the classics - the Shakespeares, the da Vincis, etc. - but what is cool is how each of these old art works are being appropriated to different times. A production of Romeo and Juliet today will be a lot different than the one Shakespeare originally performed. The production from today is a reflection of today's culture, not Elizabethan England's. It's a completely different work, one that helps us understand the times we are living in.

Quick, what's the biggest problem the world faces right now? I'll give you a hint, it's not really an engineering issue. Answer: it's that people can't understand each other. That's what basically every conflict boils down to. Sure, there are lots of ulterior motives to war, but for the common man, it really boils down to hating the "antagonizing" group so much that you'll fight to kill them. Never mind that when we get down to it, they're exactly the same as us, except they act a bit differently.

Art is continuously proving itself to be the best way to understand different cultures. It's every country's biggest export! What easier way is there to see what a society values than looking at how a society portrays itself? And once you understand how a society works, then you can work with it. At least there is no more misunderstanding there clouding people's judgement.

I'd like to point you towards early 20th century America. This was a society in which the industrial revolution ruled. Ford's innovations on the assembly line fundamentally changed America, and out of this technological upheaval came a quest for greater and greater efficiency at the cost of the working class. Despite images of prosperity from this time, in the 1920's the gap between the wealthy and the working class was greater than ever. Good thing the working man had Charlie Chaplin movies to go see, or else some historians believe America just couldn't have coped with its new emphasis on productivity. People need a coping mechanism, and art is consistently it.

People need art to function. We aren't robots, and even robots get worn down eventually. Lots of people need to come home after a long day and just chill while watching a movie, or listening to music, or watching the Big Game. It's a valuable stress reliever. Now imagine if all the people who create this type of content just disappeared. I don't know about you, but I think I've heard of a society like this before.

Now, I'm all for STEM. But I'm for STEAM even more. Do I think we live in a culture that gives the arts too much emphasis? Yes. But do I think that we should abolish the arts on account of STEM? Not on my life.

Re: Is a bias showing?
 

Henry Ford may have pioneered the modern assembly line, but he also invented the forty hour 5 day work week and doubled the average wage at the time for assembly line workers. (link) Furthermore, I think you could make a pretty good argument that the assembly line has enabled the way the middle class lives today, but that is probably a topic for another thread.

I get that art is reinvented and reinterpreted all the time, I seem to be in the minority that really enjoyed Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet and I like West Side Story too. While I appreciate those, I really can't see it as equivalent to the massive jumps made by technology. The industrial and airplane turbines of today are engines that spin a shaft, just like James Watts' walking beam steam engines of the 1700s. While the modern engine is a descendent of those early engines, they are not created equal. While the steam engine was revolutionary in it's day, 1770s technology just doesn't cut it today. We don't teach people how to design walking beam steam engines, they just aren't relevant. (which doesn't mean they aren't cool! :cool:)

SNL has a light-hearted view of it

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Alas, another one of these threads. Oh well.

First off, I would like to make a plea for all of the engineering and science majors out here not to try playing the "other majors are easy" card. I had a former student remark to me once about how freaked out his engineering classmates were in a class when told they had to write a 10 page position paper and the professor told them that part of the grade would be style and readability. Different majors have different difficulties. Don't make the mistake of assuming that just because you can do something or know something that someone else can't do or doesn't know that you are smarter or worked harder than that person.

By the same token, don't think that just because you work in a tech field that your work is intrinsically more worthwhile or more important than another person's work. Remember, a LOT of the problems we are counting on technology to solve were caused by technology.

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I think using advancement or progress interchangeably with or as a comparison to novelty is a dangerous thing to do. Maybe art isn't advancing as fast as technology or science, but it doesn't mean that West Side Story isn't a novel and refreshing reinvention of Romeo and Juliet. Maybe we're watching the same sports, but each game is different; imagine how boring it'd be if we watched the same Super Bowl game reruns or Charlie Chaplin movies over and over.

So much non-engineering goes into making good teams successful, be it marketing, animation, photography/videography, music production, web design... hell, we were even looking for good knitters to help us knit weights into fabric for this year's robot. As far as our team goes, Robotics Club is a huge misnomer, and if we couldn't communicate that, about two-thirds of our members and half our sponsors wouldn't be with us.

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"...medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for..."

- Dead Poet's Society

Pursue your passion whatever that may be and do not fault another for pursuing theirs.

- Mr. Van

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OK, I think I said some things that didn't come across well. I just think that we currently have more emphasis in schools and culture on art than on technology, and I would like to rectify that. I don't think that art is unnecessary or anything like that, and I don't want to bash artistic people.

OK, point made, though I still think overall there is more extracurricular opportunity for artistry than for STEM.

Sorry for phrasing that wrong. Again, I am not for the elimination of art. But it doesn't need the emphasis that it gets, at least not when you consider the respective loss to STEM education. By "living without art" I meant that even if art was suddenly no longer taught in schools, we'd be ok.

If anything, art like that enforces false notions about society. I think most people don't really change deep down because of movies or books. On the other hand, I do think there are plenty of cool movies and books out there. Some of it is really inspiring to me (not West Side Story, though). But even those need technology to be distributed--mechanical and electrical engineers to build the equipment, mining and materials engineers to provide the raw materials, sound technicians and cinematographers, etc. Those jobs are in demand. I know far more unemployed writers and actors than unemployed scientists and engineers.

So even art needs a lot of technology, and people with STEM backgrounds play a crucial role in producing and distributing art.

Yes, I agree. But I don't think that emphasis art is really going to solve much of that, that's just my opinion.

Again, this doesn't quite cut it for me. I'm just a skeptical person, so maybe we're at an impasse.

Before Chaplin, somebody had to invent motion pictures. It took the work of Edison, Dickson, Lumiere and others to get there.

I don't want the people who make art to disappear... I just want it to lose its status as a culturally coddled field that people seem to subconsciously think is better. People generally think of artistry as something beautiful and spiritual, which it can be, but how many people have anything but a cynical view of boring old science? Not enough.

Our culture thinks more highly of artists than STEM people. I don't like this. I want kids to think about STEM a lot. I want it to be mainstream, and I don't think it's quite there yet. And as much as I liked the Black Company books and The Beast (1988) and Firefly and so many other things, I think that we don't really we need the sheer volume of art that we have.

The way I think of it is this: if you're really inspired to be a painter or a writer, then great!! Go ahead and do what you want. But otherwise, consider STEM as a serious alternative. Right now, it's not like that. For this I blame the outdated dogma of making STEM education so formal. Students dismiss engineering as all math, which isn't true. FIRST is helping to rectify that, fortunately. The best part about FRC is the combination of hands-on experience, and relatively advanced technology which puts its alumni on the cutting edge.

But, if we're going to add art, I don't see why not add B, because business is crucial to a functioning, stable economy. So STEBAM. In fact, doctors and lawyers are also vital, as they provide important services in the service sector. So why not make it STESBAM for the service sector.

I agree 100%.

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I completely agree...
Can't we argue that science and engineering are constantly reinventing and building upon the "classics" of Einstien, simple machines, etc.?