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Originally Posted by Philip W.
No matter what the proportion between student-built and engineer-built a robot is, or student-managed and mentor-managed a team is, it would seem to us that every student in FIRST is inspired, which is the bottomline. Or are they? This is something I would like to clarify. Are students really being inspired to take careers in science and technology?
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I'm not going to answer your main questions, but I do want to give my take on inspiration in FIRST.
Of course, FIRST is supposed to be about inspiring students to go into technical careers. For me, it's about a little more than that. For me, it's about showing the students the following (in no particular order):
a) your education can be interesting and even fun. If you look a little farther down the path, you WILL "use this crap", and "this crap" can even be cool if you know how to use it. However, if you screw off it will be too late for you before you know it (and catching back up can be overwhelming).
b) even if a technical field is not for you, what you are learning now CAN and WILL be used in careers. A high school is not really an ancient form of torture who's secrets will be shared with you once you graduate. Society wants you to do it for a reason.
c) having a college degree allows you to get much nicer jobs (usually, but not always) than someone without a college degree. Those nicer jobs allow you to have a much nicer lifestyle. (I don't get too preachy here, but there is a LOT of motivation in money. If you tell someone that they can make $20,000 / year without a college degree, or $50,000 per year with one - that is pretty motivating. Joe Johnson did a great presentation at the 2004 IRI on this topic.)
d) As time goes on, advanced education will become more and more important. There are a lot of highly educated people in China, India, Poland, etc. that would love to do a lot of the jobs that us Americans take for granted (and for a lot less money). How can we compete with that? That's a great question: you (current students and future workers) are going to have to be VERY GOOD at what you do in order to justify being paid SEVEN TIMES what someone could pay a worker in Poland to do the same job. You have to be SEVEN TIMES as good - keep that in mind.
In summary: your future is only a few years away. It's time to buckle down and get serious. I hope that FIRST flips on the light switch in their heads. I just want students to become motivated (i.e. inspired) to take education seriously, work hard, and always try to do their best. The future of our way of life may just be riding on it. If they get that, I don't mind if they don't go into a technical field.