Here are my thoughts. I've been involved with FRC for for 11 years, 4 as a student and 7 as a coach/mentor. Our current "robot" team (comprised of mechanical, electrical and software teams) has about 70 students on it. We have 2 main team mentors: myself, an EE and our main team mentor, a Physics teacher. We have a couple other parents/teachers and NEMO's who are also involved but with a lesser level of technical proficiency, but they are all very dedicated and intelligent individuals.
Our entire team is student-run, as in we have students that run each of the sub-teams and are responsible for their respective responsibilities, robot-related or otherwise. We try to give every student a good amount of responsibility and level of ownership.
We also try to stay as flexible as possible. For some students we may say make this part, exactly according to this specification and do it as fast as possible. For other students we may say that we need to accomplish this task and that's it. I personally don't feel that this is an all-or-nothing debate for a team, but instead need to focus on the individual. If I have a student who gets inspired by me showing them step-by-step how to solve a problem or perform a task I'll do it, even if it includes me performing the work itself. If I have a student who prefers that I take a step back and let them learn from their mistakes with minimal guidance, I'll do that too. Most students fall somewhere in between, which as a mentor is important to recognize where they are so we can have the biggest impact. As many people post here, FIRST is about Inspiring and Recognizing the Science and Technology. As a team with a low ratio of students/mentors but still a very successful team we feel that this strategy as a whole works well, from the public perspective. However, that (to me) is not the key point of this discussion.
The point is, which is essentially what nileshp87 does not understand, is that the inspiration and recognition has no direct relation to the amount of awards that a team receives at a competition, which I assume is what really caused their misinformed post in the first place. If I can meet the goals of FIRST by working with students to make a competition winning robot, fine. If I can also meet the goals of FIRST by other activities that do not entail having a competition winning robot, that is also fine. They are both equal. I've had students on both sides of the fence. Sometimes whey the see a winning machine which truly trumps their best laid plans it inspires them to stretch the bounds of the imagination. For others, when you win it gives them a sense of accomplishment that is unrivaled.
These are just my "ravings" and I would like to inform nilesph87 that you are not alone in your opinion of FIRST teams. I know several people who feel the same way (and some of them are family
).
Unfortunately, these people are under the impression that the point of FRC is to produce a robot that wins awards and is made by high school students. Which is completely wrong.
My apologies if this is lengthy, it is fairly late for me. I just personally get frustrated when people have this opinion (not to mention from attacking a FANTASTIC team) but in Dean's words (correct me if I'm wrong) these people "just don't get it".