Pit work during ceremonies

[RunawayEngineer]

Originally Posted by Andrew Schreiber

Right because we should be teaching our students that not doing your absolute best is acceptable. If I am not 100% perfect all the time and I have students that want to work on the bot to get it to that point you can bet your mediocrity loving butt I say there's a need. I'm not going to let some talking head* get in the way of inspiration just so they can feel important. I'm going to be showing my students the value of passion.


* Talking heads that will always joke about how they couldn't do half of what these kids do. Because that's the lesson we want to show our students, that technical illiteracy is acceptable. That it's something to joke about.

Technical illiteracy is totally acceptable. There are thousands of ways to contribute to society without knowing anything about engineering.
I think that you are reading far into offhand remarks to interpret them to be discouraging people from pursuing technical interests because technical acuity is something you are born with or not. If their field isn't technical or educational, then they can't be blamed for making a comment that happens to have a common misconception underlying it.

Second, working on the robot in and of itself is not inspiration. People don't go to the opening ceremony because they are lazy or less passionate. They go because they see the bigger picture. Students are taught throughout the season about working hard to succeed - the ceremonies are one of the only chances that they get to see the bigger picture: communities, politicians, organizations, donors, volunteers, etc coming together around a common goal that has nothing to do with how well the individual robot performs.