[Kims Robot]

I have sooo many thoughts on this thread... and agree with a lot of points here. While I don't disagree with some of the issues, I want to offer a completely different perspective.

Look at FIRST from 30,000 Feet. The number of teams is growing, the number of students coming out of the programs is growing, the number of students entering engineering/STEM field is increasing! That certainly sounds like success to me.

If you pile some of the observations here together, FIRST may be looking at it more in a way that we teach our students. So many students today are AFRAID to fail. What I like about most FIRST teams & mentors, is that they try to show the kids that it is OK to fail. The guy who made the Dyson failed what, 500 times? Edison supposedly failed making the lightbulb hundreds of times as well. In order to have amazing success, you are very very likely to fail first. Maybe Dean has considered this. Maybe it is part of FIRST's plan. Before we can get a FIRST team in every school, we will hit failures along the way. And while it would be great to have a success rate of 95%, its not realistic. And we have seen that some teams that fail go away and come back. Some teams that begin to fail merge. Others have different stories.

We helped a city school rookie team last year, and really gave it our all. I spent hours a week on the phone with their mentor, we met with them 4 times a week (they came to our place, we went to theirs), their kids had a great time. Unfortunately, they didnt make it back this year, but a student & parent that came to help/shadow during that time went off to start another rookie team that is alive and well and I believe has all the drivers to succeed. So out of one "failure" came success. Its really hard to measure things by just looking at team numbers.

The big picture and the GOAL of FIRST is to inspire students. And my answer to the question of are we meeting our goals is YES.

Is CD Cranky at times? yes. Should all of us do everything we can to help teams sustain? Of course. But are there some times where is ok to fail? Yup. Could all of this have been considered by FIRST? Of course.

I'm not saying things are necessarily perfect the way they are, but sometimes it helps to look at things from a different perspective.