I normally stay far away from these threads, but I thought I'd say this once:
FIRST is about inspiration.
There are many ways to be inspired. Inspiration means different things to different people. Consider these situations:
- Students build a robot by themselves, or with limited mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (personally able to achieve, due to limited mentor involvement), inspires them to go into STEM.
- Students build a robot with some mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (and possibly the knowledge of what they could be able to achieve, by seeing what their mentors know), inspires them to go into STEM.
- Students build a robot with mentor guidance. Their success (by their definition) and the knowledge of what they were able to achieve (and possibly the knowledge of what they could be able to achieve, by seeing what their mentors know), inspires them to go into STEM.
- Students on any type of team go to competition and see other teams compete, some with more mentor involvement that may have great success. They return with the knowledge of what is possible (and possibly try to use it to change their team), and are inspired to go into STEM.
- Students on any type of team go to competition and see other teams compete, some with less mentor involvement. They return with the knowledge of what is possible (and possibly try to use it to change their team), and are inspired to go into STEM.
As a student, I find all of these scenarios inspiring in their own way, and personally do not see how any of these scenarios could be considered the "wrong" way to inspire. Some people will find one scenario more inspiring to them than another, and other vice versa.
To me, if a team inspires their students, they are successful. How they decide to achieve their inspiration depends on the team, and could range from very little to a lot of mentor involvement.
Until one method has been shown to not inspire students to pursue STEM, I believe that teams with a high level of mentor involvement are just as relevant to the mission of FIRST as those with little or no mentor involvement. Which direction a team chooses to go is completely their own decision, and should not be pushed as the one "right" way to do FRC.