[marshall]

Originally Posted by Carolyn_Grace

This is an important discussion to have, and I'm really proud of our FIRST and Robotics community for having it.

The one point I disagree on is the bashing of Ahmed's teachers. I'm in my second year teaching, and it's ridiculous how difficult it is sometimes to actually teach my content when there's so many other things happening on a daily basis. Every teacher that I've come in contact with for the past two years of my career always has the best interests at heart for their students. Sometimes that manifests in drastically different ways.

I don't blame Ahmed's teachers. The teachers are part of a larger institute that needs to take responsibility, including administration and police. But I'm slow to point fingers at the English teacher. There's very few of us silly non-STEM English teachers in the world who even know what an Arduino even is.

So yes, let's educate. (I'm educating my co-workers regularly about STEM and Robotics), but please let's also do so in a way that doesn't bash the teachers, who have enough on their plate at the moment.

This is a really good point. As the pace of change for technology accelerates, it is up to us in the engineering tribe to educate those not in it about the wonders that are out there. My mom is a retired English/Language Arts/Social Studies teacher and I'm happy to say she is still learning new stuff, even today. She probably couldn't pick out an Arduino from a Raspberry Pi but she knows her way around an iPad and understands that microcontrollers are what make it all possible.