[Sunshine]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

If you're already motivated enough to want to build a robot; to believe that students can do a job as good or better than professionals, FIRST has run its course for you.

Wow,
Where did that come from? He never said that students can do a job as good or better than professionals when building a robot. You totally missed the point.

I believe that there are two simple points here. Students learn, grow and have fun learning by doing. They need to be active aprticipants.

I believe that there is an underlying concern that few are willing to address/talk about. Some mentors and students are turned off by the perception that there are teams out there where the robot is totally built by the mentors. You can attempt to justify this any way you want but student teams get turned off thinking that they will never do well because they are competing against engineers NOT other students. .

I'll have nothing to do with this passive involvement of the students. If we can not motivate and educate them to produce a functional machine, we have failed.