Quote:
Originally Posted by N7UJJ
Boys wind up on the construction and driving teams while girls are more likely involved in fund raising publicity. It is not necessarily because boys push them away, but because girls are more socially aware and are more willing to do what is best for the team. If a girl believes that a boy’s skills with tools are superior to hers, she is more likely to back off from the pit crew for the good of the team.
|
This corresponds with my own experience. I joined the team to build. I was encouraged to join the team by a middle school (male) tech teacher who helped me design and build my own hoverboard as an independent project.
However, between the fact that there were a large number of freshmen, young and inexperienced leadership, and a sudden gap in parent support as many of the most dedicated left with their graduating students within about 2 years, there was a gap. The gap namely being the entire side the team's existence that wasn't the robot.
No one else was volunteering, so I did. And that's what I did my entire time on the team. I have never contributed to any part that ever made it on to our robot - which was my entire reason for joining the team. I remember a crushing moment in freshman year after competition season, when the robot was sitting in my tech class and I realized I had not touched a single part on the robot, and I had learned absolutely nothing about building, designing, or anything else that goes into making a robot.
I have had bitter outbursts about my lack of a technical experience on the team to my friends, but I believed (and still do) in the mission of FIRST and in spreading it, so I organized the demos, and wrote the Chairman's, and ran recruitment, and did outreach to elementary schools willingly because no one else was going to do it and it needed to get done. I don't regret doing any of this, but now being at college with so many other FIRST alumni and they'll talk gear ratios and transmissions and other things and they go right over my head. I feel like I'm playing catch-up in my engineering classes. They'll shy away too when I mention what I did on my team. They'll be like "Oh, that's.... nice..." and then leave as fast it's polite to, as if I am not a "real" FIRST student.
I remember one incident my freshman year, I was helping to make a prototype with a mentor (just cutting and drilling some wood someone else had pre-marked). An older boy came and started helping us, and started slowly taking over my jobs, and relegating me to holding boards as he drilled and such. Eventually I was left watching. And then I was ordered to go somewhere else and find something else to do. The mentor was right there the whole time.
I agree, all-girl FIRST teams could prove extraordinarily beneficial to their members. In FIRST there is no way to dumb down the rules and the challenges, like what has happened as our district's all-girl technology classes. But I agree too that making a huge issue of girl vs. boy may only serve to perpetuate the inequalities. There's not really a right answer.
Really, all I want to say, is for all the mentors: do not ever let another student push someone away who is trying to learn. I'm sure 99.99% of you don't. But it happens. And the only way to fix it is to make people aware.