Quote:
Originally Posted by Carl C
I never said or even implied that these things violated GP principles. I simply stated that not all things should be discounted as less important simply because they are not included in the FIRST acronym and used GP as an example.
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But Dean Kamen didn't invest all his time and effort to start FIRST just because he wanted to foster Gracious Profesionalism. He founded it because he want to gain recognition and inspiration for STEM. And there is a lot more evidence than just the name. FIRST was founded to address a problem. That problem was a lack in the number of engineers in our country and in the world. His solution was to get more students excited about STEM so that they would go off college and major in STEM related fields. FIRST is designed to facilitate this. It is not designed to teach students, it is designed to get students into college where they can be taught. If FIRST was really about teaching students, than why isn't there a college level competition? There is no doubt in my mind that FIRST would be the most effective at teaching if it was at the college level, yet for some reason it hasn't been implemented there yet. The simple reason is that, when you get to the core, it is about the inspiration and recognition of science and technology, not teaching.
FIRST also happens to be really effective at teaching high school students, and it also happens to be great at building character, and that is absolutely amazing. I am not saying that teams should try to avoid these things, because they are awesome. The problem comes in when you start to prioritize these things over inspiration, and let that drive your decisions.
Relating this back to the original purpose of this thread, the argument that students aren't learning as much doesn't really hold much weight, so long as Ri3D/BB are increasing the inspiration in FIRST. I wouldn't change anything except make the teams and robots somehow better than they already are.