Local newspaper Staff editorial ,Please Read!

The Schenectady Gazette Sunday Dec. 9 Opinion section L.D. Davidson "Letting business shape K-12 curriculum is terrible idea" Paragraph 14 reads as follows.

"it is wonderful that Students in Amsterdam are building "Robots" that play basketball. It must be great fun, especially if it substitutes for class time better spent on reading, writing, math and learning to think clearly"

Amsterdam 4134 is a second year team, looking forward to a new challenge.

Please take the time to research and respond to this article.

The Sunday Gazette , PO box 1090 Schenectady NY 12301
(518) 374-4141
Daniel Beck General Manager (518)395-3036
Arthur Clayman Opinion page Editor (518)395-3133
E-mail gazette@dailygazette.net

[Billfred]

Is this op-ed posted anywhere? I can only find the tiniest of snippets from the top, and that makes it difficult to make any sort of well-thought response.

[jwallace15]

That angers me. They obviously don't understand that FIRST is more than just building robots. Chairman's Award is reading and writing, and nearly everything done while building a robot has to do with math. I'm sorry if I misread the clip from the newspaper, but it sounds to me like they think FRC is silly.

[ebarker]

The article isn't available to non-subscribers. ( or maybe I'm doing something wrong )

There isn't enough information in the OP to determine the context.

But yeah, I can give a whole lecture on the relevancy of business and other societal stakeholder participation in the determination of curriculum.

If the article is submitted to the AP, then we should be able to find it elsewhere...

Unfortunately the internet is full of opinion givers that have not done due diligence in their research, or have a worldview that pre-conditions the outcome. But I speculate because I have not done my own due diligence researching an article I have not read.

Suggestion: It is time to make lemonade out of lemons. They brought it to the public's attentions. Now is the time to jump in and correct the facts...

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by ebarker

If the article is submitted to the AP, then we should be able to find it elsewhere...

From what I can tell, it's an op-ed; Googling the author's name doesn't show anything in the way of syndication.

[ebarker]

I'm not familiar with the political goings on in NY state but apparently the following is in part what kicked off this opinion piece.

http://www.techvalley.org/Pages/Live...itiatives.html

Obviously there is support for a variety of initiatives including robotics in techvalley.

PS - the need to update the web page, it says the championship is at the Georgia Dome.

PS2 - hopefully that will become accurate again one day.

L.D Davidson is a regular contributor to the Sunday Opinion section and lives in Amsterdam. I will post the entire article later this AM.

[ebarker]

The Sunday Gazette

Mr. Daniel Beck
Mr. Arthur Clayman

In response to "Letting business shape K-12 curriculum is terrible idea".

On December 8th, we had a rookie team that is going to participate in the FIRST Robotics Competition in for the full day at our shop, the 'IC' ( the Kell Robotics Innovation Center ) in Kennesaw Georgia.

They rode a school bus 200 miles, one way to get there. They thought they were coming to learn just some technical things, but a lot of time and energy was spent on personal and team development, problem solving, ownership of problems and processes, design process, and other things. These are a few of the things that make a team successful and the personal skills developed are valuable to future employers.

They volunteered to come 200 miles, from a Title I school, on a Saturday, to learn things that engage them academically and intellectually, and move them toward becoming successful members of society. During the next few years they will mature, and find motivation and interests that many of their peers will not find. For some of them, December 8th, 2012 is the day their compass became aligned, they decided they were going to become better students and find out what they wanted to do with their career. They found a respite from the academic treadmill and discovered they can do something exciting, relevant, important, and fun.

Criticizing schools for allowing students to build a "basketball playing robot" exposes a deep misunderstanding of what it takes to accomplish this task. It requires a high degree of critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving, and other tasks that educators strive to accomplish in the classroom through “manufactured academic exercises”. It reminds one of the scene from the movie where Rodney Dangerfield is in a business class. Producing a robot to do a task like play basketball well is really tough and not unlike the challenges students will face in their career after school.

Educators work to prepare students to pursue hundreds of careers, from law, medicine, mechanics, construction, education, and so on. For the most part it is done in the classroom. Imagine that we prepared football players the same way we prepared these other students. We could teach them how to play football from a textbook, physically condition them in a gym class, and save all the cost and bother of having football programs after school. “You mean we could prepare athletes for NCAA and NFL and save all that time and money”. Unfortunately we train students the same way for other fields.

For thousands of years there has been a student/mentor apprenticeship process. The modern world has lost this old world process. If we are going to make progress in education, we have to reconnect students with mentors from outside the classroom, through competitions such as robotics, summer internships in business, and other activities that motivate and excite students about what they are doing in the classroom. The goal of the educational process is to help produce educated competent members of society. Test scores are an outcome of the process, not the ultimate goal. If we do not engage students in mentor based programs like robotics and other STEM and non-stem programs, we will abandon millions of students to spending years looking for ways to get their career started.

Ed Barker
Assistant Director of Advance Computing
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw Georgia
Director, The Carlton J. Kell Robotics Team, aka Kell Robotics

Full disclosure: A major sponsor of Kell Robotics is the General Electric Company, Infrastructure, Energy

[Alpha Beta]

Edit: While a username and password combination are easily guessed... posting hints towards that process is perhaps not ethical.

I am afraid due to a copyright I am unable to post the entire article. If you are truly interested, the article can be purchased for $2.00 at the Schenectady gazette web site. www.dailygazette.com
Search "Letting business shape K-12 curriculum"

Basically the author seems to be saying that the Amsterdam 4134 Robotics program is a "Frankenprogram" created by some corporations sinister motives. The entire purpose is to create a narrowly trained labor force that will be obsolete in 15 years.

The author believes we need more Social workers, Lawyers and Teachers before we need more tech workers, (whatever that is). I am curious if the author understands the need for Engineers, Chemists, Mechanics, Machinists, Designers, etc. etc. add your own non-essential career to the list.

[ebarker]

Originally Posted by DMike

Basically the author seems to be saying that the Amsterdam 4134 Robotics program is a "Frankenprogram" created by some corporations sinister motives. The entire purpose is to create a narrowly trained labor force that will be obsolete in 15 years.

Bottom line is it is just an opinion of the author... there are plenty of opinions that contradict that opinion. Such is benefits of a plural society. Just view it as an opportunity to further the education of the public as to the value of robotics and other programs. The fact that this is being debated in a public forum ( the newspaper ) is good news. A few years ago that would not have happened.

At risk of kicking off another side discussion one of the things that is very irritating about society today is the worldview by some that "corporations" are big and evil and the concept of making money and enlightened self interest is somehow bad. The concept of well managed enlightened self interest seems to be lost on too many people, to the detriment of us all.

[cgmv123]

Found this through Googling: http://www.dailygazette.net/standard...ection=Opinion

The author is seriously misinformed. I wonder what going to an FRC regional would do for him.

We should all use this as an opportunity to remind ourselves, and everyone else, that this is so much more than "building 'robots'".

[JRuegsegger]

As a high school student on a FIRST team and in a journalism class, I can say that this is one of the worst articles I have ever read.

Bias and an obvious lack of research are both slathered thoroughly over that article. I won't even get into AP writing style.

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by JRuegsegger

As a high school student on a FIRST team and in a journalism class, I can say that this is one of the worst articles I have ever read.

Bias and an obvious lack of research are both slathered thoroughly over that article. I won't even get into AP writing style.

Not to mention overt typos. This article has absolutely zero credibility by any standard. I sincerely hope that most readers are intelligent enough to realize this.

[Gregor]

First and probably last time I'll say this on these forums.


lol