Local newspaper Staff editorial ,Please Read!

[Billfred]

I sent my two cents:

L.D. Davidson's Sunday op-ed says sarcastically "Likewise, 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."

Having mentored students in the same FIRST Robotics Competition as Amsterdam for nearly a decade now, I invite Mr. Davidson to visit with a FIRST team when the season begins next month--almost all meet outside school hours. I extend this invitation because I believe he is misinformed about the program and what results from a student's participation in it.

When a student has READ the competition manual to avoid creating an overweight, out-of-spec machine, WRITTEN sponsors from the local hardware store on up to NASA (which sponsors 11 teams in New York this year) to pay for expenses, done the MATH to ensure the motors will hold the load and won't blow every breaker on the robot, and LEARNED TO THINK CLEARLY when troubleshooting a custom-built 120-pound machine (and its software) in 10 minutes before the next match, the result is not merely a student with specific vocational training. The result is a student prepared to work through tough problems in any business, including those that don't exist yet.

This is why colleges and universities offer over $16 million in scholarships to graduates of the program, why names from George H.W. Bush to the founders of Google and YouTube have spoken at our championship event, and why companies as diverse as Xerox, Motorola, Bausch & Lomb, Lockheed Martin, L3 Communications, Con Edison, jcpenney, Time Warner Cable, and even the New York Yankees are supporting FIRST teams in the state of New York this year.

And yes, it IS great fun.

Sincerely,

William "Billfred" Leverette
Columbia, South Carolina