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Originally Posted by KarenH
However, according to the FIRST website:
"FIRST ... aspires to transform culture, making science, math, engineering, and technology as cool for kids as sports are today."
Since people create culture, the only way to transform culture is to transform (change) people. Most societies recognize that the easiest people to change are the youth. This is why Dean Kamen invented a youth organization, not a professional society. He wants to change people.
In fact, as he has publicly stated, he has no children of his own. Instead, he regards FIRST as his children. That is, he regards himself as our father. What is one of the main jobs of a father? It is to mold (change) his children into the kind of adults he thinks they should be.
I think it is also abundantly evident that Dean regards science and technology as being more beneficial--that is, BETTER for society--than sports. Since this attitude is being actively promoted from the top down in FIRST, what are some ways we can avoid thinking--and projecting the attitude--that we are BETTER than others?
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Dean Kamen certainly does want to change society, change people, and change youth, but I don't look at it as a Hitler Youth type of thing (could be an extreme analogy and I know it isn't what you said, but it's the best example I could think of). He doesn't want to replace sports, but he wants to fix an imbalance in the popularity of sports and the popularity of science and engineering. He wants to help fix shortcomings of education in this country. What would really be
better for society would be if these things were fixed, not if scientists and engineers are enthroned as the world's elite.
We can avoid projecting that attitude by simply trying to. I'd say we shoud look at everyone as equals and talk to people on the same level. We want students to join FIRST because it's one of many great programs and it's fun, but it isn't superior. As sciguy points out, there are different reasons for different people to join a certain program.
An idea I have to answer the question "how can we avoid thinking that..." is that if we focus on our goals, on being a part of FIRST, on having fun, and on making our teams better experiences, we can avoid focusing on comparing ourselves to others and on thinking that we're stronger and more successful.
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Originally Posted by sciguy125
If FIRST isn't the best, what are you doing here?
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Something can be the best for other reasons than how beneficial it is. FIRST is great for me because I love it. Granted, there might be other programs in the school that would be better for me and I would love more, but I don't know about them. Within my knowledge, the activities I participate in are the best because they're beneficial to me, I love them, I have friends in the activities...so on.
Enough of me talking; somehow my posts are always longer than everyone else's
