Ed,
Earlier today, I had a devil of a time with my Internet connection but I was able make some progress. I spent the time my connection was up, going over my recent posts to look for any place where I might have written the ideas you describe. There seem to be some "disconnects".
I still plan to write a reply that covers my take on the fundamental, philosophical topic, if you will; but first let's try to reconnect the disconnects.
No sweat - I can unconfuse you about how I feel about that part of things. Within the last week, in this post
346, I wrote this "
... you feed the STEM hunger of eager/inspired students, and you feed them as much as you and they can handle - because it's fun."
Again, within the last week, in the same post
346, I tried to explain my point of view with these sentences,
"
When planning club/team activities, whenever we reached the point of having to choose/recommend how we are going to spend our chunks of scarce time, I try[sic] to think hard about whether I/we should invest those hours and energy into making an OK robot better, or into introducing new people to STEM opportunities.
Those two things certainly aren't 100% mutually-exclusive, but they aren't 100% identical either; and the clock is a merciless taskmaster."
So I agree with you, good robots and the other parts of being an FRC team aren't exclusive.
Where I suspect we might disagree is the subject of whether build a best-possible robot is the primary mission of an FRC team, and/or on whether FRC teams need to build a best-possible robot in order to accomplish their primary mission.
Everywhere I searched (so far) for any place I might have accidentally written that an FRC team's annual robot isn't important, I came up empty. I'm glad that I didn't accidentally write that in any of the places I looked so far. Can you point to any place (so that I can fix it)?
With that in mind, I think we agree that being a well-rounded and good FRC team easily includes, and certainly doesn't exclude building good robots.
Where you and I (and others who would encourage both of us) probably diverge is on whether "best-possible robot" is the enemy of "good-enough robot".
Along those lines, I have written things like this comment about what I would suggest is a good way to evaluate the success of a FIRST team. "
... introducing students to enough positive STEM experiences to open their eyes to the possibility that they might enjoy a STEM career. To do that you don't even need to have competitions. You might choose to use competitions, but they aren't required." (in the PS of this post
214).
Also, in this post
5, I wrote this *opinion* about how I would look at things, if I were FIRST HQ, "
I think that the the on-the-field performance exhibited by the teams that are already doing well (in that part of FIRST), is good enough. I don't mean to say that better performance would be harmful; but if I'm right, I do mean that across the globe, for the teams that aren't struggling, improving the on-the-field part of FRC should not be pulling time, attention, and other resources away from the other parts of FRC.".
Another way to say it would be that I (and Mathking, and JWeston, and Jon Stratis, and ...) believe that FIRST intends for the teams' robots to be a means, not an end.
Does the above close up those disconnects?
I don't think I'm writing anything now or before that is substantially different from what Mathking, JWeston, Kressley, Stratis, and others have written here and elsewhere. I suppose write I it more often than them - and thereby make myself a lightning rod - but I don't think that I'm out of synch with them or the many others who share the "means, an not an end" viewpoint.
Blake