The Meaning of FIRST

[Chris Hibner]

I don't believe I'm replying to this thread. I know it goes against my better judgement, but here it goes.

Originally Posted by sabruce01

I believe that if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

This is an often used quote, but I don't believe it is the best analogy when it comes to FIRST. Here's why (this will probably be long winded: sorry):

We don't need inpiration to eat. If we don't eat, we will die. Everyone is already very inspired to eat, so if you need to fish to eat you already have plenty of inspiration (i.e. avoiding death).

A more likely statement would be: "if you solve and equation for a student, he has one solved equation. If you teach a student to solve equations, then the student can solve equations for a lifetime."

That sounds great, but the schools are already doing that. Unfortunately, the success rate is not good in a lot of cases.

The problem lies in the question that we've all heard from fellow students hundreds of times in our school days: "Why do we have to learn this? when are we ever going to use this crap!?!" The answer to this question is where FIRST comes in.

The issue is that if a student doesn't want to learn something, he/she generally won't learn it very well. People don't want to die of starvation so teaching a hungry person to fish is easy. People that think that imaginary numbers have no use in the real world don't have enough interest to not purge that knowledge right after the exam (if they have enough interest to learn it in the first place). Our standard education system does not have: a) a method of getting the students to want to learn, and b) a method to get them to apply what they've learned to reinforce it.

With all of that being said, these are my goals as a mentor:

Goal 1: Provide some answers to "how are we ever going to use this crap?"

Goal 2: Make students actually WANT to learn about math and science. (i.e. inspire them). If we can do some cool whiz-bang things, then they can see that not only can you use what you learned in school, but you can do some fun things with it.

Goal 3a: Get the students to learn above and beyond what they're learning in school, and apply what they've learned (i.e. get them to do some basic work on the robot).

Goal 3b: Get the students to use what they've learned to do some advanced work on the robot.


Goal 2 is the stated goal of FIRST. If I can't achieve that goal, that is when I feel I've failed as a mentor. Goal 3a and 3b are the icing on the cake.

I'm not always able to get all the way to 3b. Sometimes, I may not be able to get to 3a with all of the students in their first year on the team. It depends a lot on the students, but I try my hardest to get to 3b with every student that I can before he/she leaves the team.

Back to the original intent:

It's kind of like the reason that Dean Kamen founded FIRST: if he works on the world's problems, then he has one person trying to solve the worlds problems. If he creates an army of engineers, then he has an army solving the world's problems. I agree that if we can teach the students something then they have some skill that they can use for life. However, if we can inspire them to want to learn in school, then they will have thousands of skills that they would otherwise purge from their memory the minute the final exam is over.