[jee7s]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

Sure, let's do. Are you allowing females on to your team? If yes, you are offending a significant portion of some cultures. Are you allowing students to work on Saturdays? Again, same issue. Do you happen to believe and teach that science advances humanity, and that we should embrace scientific pursuit? Does this include issues like the age of the earth, or the theory of evolution?...

Consider what is necessary to reach the population you are alluding to. It's not an easy one to reach. And dropping an f-bomb on your biggest stage is vinegar, not honey.

You'll note from my location tag above that I live in Texas. This is the state where government has mandated that students in pubic schools must be taught both evolution and intelligent design. And then they are tested on both on a state standardized test that they must pass to graduate high school. You appear to feel you have a difficult situation with your team in the environment you teach in. Consider Texas, a state where there are significant poverty and drug problems among a population that has one of the highest number of places of worship per capita in the world.

Look, I teach in an urban environment, and the last thing I want to do is put a stumbling block in the way of my students. Cuss words are not a stumbling block here. Maybe they are where your team is.

They are. On my old team in the northeastern US, I would curse all the time as a mentor and no one really cared. It took all of one occurrence of me saying "hell" for me to be pulled aside and admonished by my teacher counterparts here in Texas. It was unacceptable and inappropriate. With the underserved, poor, and mostly minority population of the school it was essential for the teachers and mentors to be role models from the professional world. To do otherwise was a disservice to the students.

...But FIRST probably wants to reach urban kids, and this was speaking their language. So I'm down with it. Sorry you're not.

QED.