[GGCO]

Oh Andrew, I was waiting for your reply.

Actually Andrew, homework was mentioned in the initial post. But we'll get back to this later.

Recently, our school enacted a policy regarding the amount of time that students could have for homework and extracurricular activities.

As to the "straw man" argument, let's examine what you said.

User rtfgnow said:

Problem? I saw nothing in the first post that said that student performance dropped. I see no reason to fix something that isn't broken. If you try to, well, stupid is an accurate word. If there was a problem with students sleeping in class, skipping class, getting worse grades (even if they are not bad) than the policy has some meat on its bones.

To which you responded with:

For the team it may not be a problem but this policy is across the board and it IS a problem for many high schoolers. Now, perhaps the team may get an exception made but calling the policy stupid is a good way of pissing off the people you need to help you.

I'm assuming that the problem you're talking about here, "

...and it IS a problem for many high schoolers

" is about students not getting enough sleep or their performance dropping. My "Johnnie example" describes an edge case or scenario where a student who works hard for their grades by studying and on homework (I'm one of those BTW) would be hurt by this new rule. In summary you cried, "but they don't know their limits" and I responded with "so what?". That brings me to my next point.

Limits. We all have them. Right now on my team many of our members participate on crew which gets pretty intense during the second half of the season. Since we were a rookie team last year many of the students didn't realize the commitment level they would need to give for robotics. However, our team coaches (and one parent very involved with the school's crew team) made sure to communicate any scheduling conflicts and help team members make the right choices as to what to do when there was no way of avoiding a conflict.

For some members they had to choose one or the other (our team is actually pretty intense - we're not the type where you can show up one day a week and call yourself a member), but that was a really great experience for them. They learned what their limits were.

Now I thought it was interesting to see a parent's perspective on the forum:

Originally Posted by SouthCarolinaRo

We are getting ready to begin our third year and the amount of hours students are putting into Robotics is very concerning to me. Most importantly, safety. Either driving late at night or being careless with equipment because of lack of sleep.

Yeah, that's an issue. Assuming that you're not like many parents - easily worried - then you should talk to the student/mentor.

Originally Posted by SouthCarolinaRo

I am the parent of two kids playing high school basketball. Which takes place for the first half of our build season. Our robotics kids put in three to five times as many hours than my kids do their high school teams.

Fantastic! I'd also bet they have three to five times as much fun at a competition.

Originally Posted by SouthCarolinaRo

I think it is totally crazy to see this much time being spent building a robot. I do not think it was the intent of FIRST to have students devote this many hours building a robot. Not during a school year.

I'm honestly offended by that statement. To many kids, including myself, robotics is the greatest thing that ever happened to them during high school, so spending hours working on a problem isn't crazy at all. Also, the kids spending the "crazy amount of time" working on the robot are making a choice to do so. So either they enjoy torturing themselves, or they are actually engaged and thinking about something important and interesting.

It really seems to me that our culture is on this crusade against greatness and exceptionalism. You either have to be a singer or football player to be great. You can't have a desire to build things, invent, create, or make more money than you ever dreamed of without getting attacked by someone who thinks you need balance in your life or to "tone it down". Why is it that we all have to be mediocre so we don't offend anyone?