[Jaci]

I understand that for you 'domestic' teams, international participation can be a touchy subject. Regardless, I'll try and explain why the international expansion of FIRST (and other programs, such as VEX) is important, and honestly should have been a goal from the beginning. For reference, I'm a recent high school graduate from Western Australia, now mentoring.

You mention that Dean Kamen is quoted "experts saw a dramatic decline in the number of American students interested in math and science in [the USA]". This is important, for sure, but something it doesn't cover is how this compares to other countries. The US is quite ahead of the ball when it comes to education surrounding STEM subjects, and have career opportunities and colleges to boot.

Comparing this with other countries, you can see why it's so hard to get programs like FIRST up and running (and sustainable) in other countries, below the University and College level. For example, in Regional (and even RA1) Australia, although the interest in STEM is quite high as compared to prior years, it's very hard to find programs that facilitate this interest at the primary and high school level. The rise of Lego Mindstorms, FLL, VEX and (more recently) FRC have seen engagements go up as students realize they are no longer 'region-locked' in their field.

If you were to limit this program to just the US, you would likely see other countries sprout up with similar programs, seeing that their governments and education systems are willing to financially support it. This is great, for sure, but it runs into a few roadblocks. Let's look at sports for example: Some sports are worldwide, and have teams competing from all over the world (soccer, basketball just to name a few). However, you look at others that seem quite similar in play, but are still kept to specific regions (America's NFL as compared to Australia's AFL, for example). Both have their specific flavour of the game, but there's important differences between the two. This means that if an American student wants to learn to play AFL, they would have to relocate to Australia to train and to join a team, likewise for the reverse. The same thing can happen if there weren't an international program to facilitate STEM competitions. Students would miss out on opportunities, not make as many friends, and feel 'locked' to their country. Sure, the skills are transferable, but you can shrink this scale down to individual high schools if you want to see what I'm getting at. If your school and another school both ran robotics competitions, but the competitions were local to each school, you wouldn't see much cross-talk between them. The goal is to bring the world together, not further divide it.

I've met a lot of students who start out with very negative views of the United States, but after attending Championships for the first time, they seemed much more open-minded and thought "hey, maybe I could end up there one day" instead of feeling like they will only have opportunities down under.

As for how FIRST will handle this situation, it's not my position to say. But I will add that here in Australia we have FIRST Australia, who deal with managing FIRST in our country, as well as helping other countries and communities get up and running. If you want more details about this, I would suggest talking to Team 3132.

FIRST will flourish in countries where the interest is there (just like sports do, you don't see many people in the US playing cricket, for example). For countries where it doesn't, maybe it will take more time, or maybe it won't sprout at all. International expansion is great, and we should be full steam ahead on getting more and more students involved. It's important that we also recognize that everywhere (and everyone) has their own culture and view from which they see the world. We should be searching for students, regardless of where they are, who have a passion for STEM. If, for whatever reason, they don't want to pursue STEM, then I think it's important we don't pressure them. We're here to embrace people's passions, not change them.