Quote:
Originally Posted by drewjones13
I am a just out of high school and into college student. I have been in first for 3 years going on 4. When I was in a FIRST team, I was able to perform mathematics at all levels required to do any programming and engineering tasks needed for any situation. My backgrounds in mathematics, physics, and engineering are at the high school level with AP Calculus, AP Physics, and Drafting as well as other engineering classes. I believe that high school students can perform this kind of mathematics and convey it clearly. I was also able to convey all that I needed to say about situations without extra effort. Many of the control theories can be performed without needed in the differential equations. I find it hard to understand that this is supposedly impossible for high school students to do this properly when in FIRST the students are the ones who design and create these systems. Which that proves my point of students having enough background in mathematics to produce profession quality by utilizing out of the box methods of interface with newer technology such as Wii-motes, glove interfaces and popular controllers like the Xbox 360 controllers.
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While you may have had access to all of these resources some schools do not offer AP Calc, Ap Physics, or even drafting. So while it is nice that you had those resources available to you but you assume everyone has those same resources. I would LOVE to be able to trust the school to teach our students how to do most of the stuff, it would allow me to teach them the more important things about efficiency and elegance in code and mechanics. But instead I have to spend most of my time teaching students what a program is and the syntax.
Your basic assumption that everyone has the same resources you did is not correct, some of the teams out there scrape by for everything and some of the educational systems, particularly in inner city schools need FRC because otherwise those students would have NO exposure to any engineering education.