A testimony to my unique FIRST experience:

[Wayne C.]

Originally Posted by Rich Kressly

Wow Ken, lots to discuss here. You're certainly a uniquely gifted person who does not need to allow doubt to slow you down. I only wish all of the students I teach would entertain these important thoughts. Without being redundant, I'll throw you a few ideas your way in reference to your big questions. Again, therse are my humble opinions, not answers.

Ken and Rich- I saw Rich's entry and thought it would be a good place to add my two cents. I hope Rich doesn't mind... WC

"Who am I to say I am qualified to decide what’s good for the future?"

Nobody can say they are THE expert on what's good for the future. But when you work with a group and are concerned with the future of others thats a step in the right direction.

"How do I know I am doing the right thing?"

You never "know", but you feel it intuitively. You learn to trust your instincts. As you move forward you realize the ONLY person who never feels this kind of discomfort is the person who never makes a decision. I recommend reading Celestine Prophecy, closely examining western philosophy, and reading anything that has to do with understanding self or enlightenment.

Hey, just being concerned THAT you are doing the right thing is more than many people ever do. We need lots more people who do show that concern.

And for that matter, how can anyone say they are qualified to decide what’s good for the future?
Well trained, well intentioned, well informed people with courage are necessary for the advancement of mankind.

And concern for others doesn't hurt either...

If we make that decision based on the values we learned when we were growing up, and if all values in a society are all cultural relative, who can say what is the absolute right or wrong decision?

There is never an absolute anything (except 0= -273C) but making decisions for the good of the whole and being willing to sacrifice at times seems to be the right thing.

"In the battle of life, it is not the critic who counts; nor the one who points out how the strong person stumbled, or where the doer of a deed could have done better.


Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

and I'll add (repeat) my quote from a sales seminar years ago-
"success isn't in doing the uncommon things, it is doing the common things uncommonly well"

Keep doing the common things as well as you do... WC

Keep asking good questions Ken. They are far more valuable than the quest for absolute answers.

good stuff- read the mixed in above...

[Matt Adams]

Ken-

I’ll openly admit that I haven’t had a lot of discussions with you on these boards, nor have I had the chance to meet you in person, so we’re obviously not that close of friends. However, as I read the several question you posed… I thought for a while, and I realize that I believe the answers are somewhat straightforward in my mind.

I think that FIRST, because it works so often within public schools, often limits talks of deep philosophy, simply due to do things like the separation of church and state. You can’t really talk any sort of deep life philosophy, unless it has all elements of God removed it.

However, as Christian, I see these questions and can’t help but try to answer them. As a disclaimer, I’m not going to argue about God’s existence or the validity of my beliefs in this or any other thread, though if anyone would like to write me an email, send a private message, or IM me, I’d be more than happy to talk with you. Please don't reply to this post to try to rebuke my beliefs and take this thread off topic.

I answer these questions based on what I believe to be true. I’ve rearranged the order so that they flow a little bit better with my thought process.

Originally Posted by Ken Leung

If we make that decision based on the values we learned when we were growing up, and if all values in a society are all cultural relative, who can say what is the absolute right or wrong decision?

I think that all of your questions actually stem from this one. I think that sometimes people use the ideas of moral values and moral practices interchangably. I don’t believe that moral values are relative; rather, I believe that they are absolute. However, it’s very obvious that moral practices do indeed differ. One of my favorite apologists, Dr. William Craig, put it best:

Originally Posted by Dr. William Lane Craig

One may say, for instance, that some action, say, rape, may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human development has become taboo; but that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really wrong. Without absolute values, there's nothing really wrong with your raping someone.

But the problem is that objective values do exist, and deep down we all know it. There's no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior--they're moral abominations. Some things are really wrong. Similarly love, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good.

You can read some more about this in a debate he particpated in.

I think people sometimes decide that because some cultures and individuals differ in certain moral practices, there must not be any objective moral values. However, I just don't see this to be true. I’ve summarized briefly some part of a paper by Francis J. Beckwith, titled Philosophical Problems With Moral Relativism, which support this belief.

Originally Posted by Francis Beckwith

The fact that people disagree about something does not mean there is no objective truth. If you and I disagree about whether or not the earth is round, for example, this is not proof that the earth has no shape. In moral discussion, the fact that a Neo-Nazi and I may disagree about whether we should treat people equally and fairly is not sufficient evidence to say that equality and fairness have no objective value. Even if individuals and cultures held no values in common, it does not follow from this that nobody is right or wrong about the correct values. That is, there could be a morally erring individual or culture, such as Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

One can’t conclude that because cultures and individuals differ in moral practices that they do not share common values. For example, the fact that some female islanders who live in the South Seas do not cover their chests and British women do doesn't mean that the former do not value modesty. Due to the climate, environmental conditions, and certain religious beliefs, the people of the South Seas have developed certain practices by which to manifest the transcultural value of modesty. Although cultures may differ about how they manifest such values as honesty, courage, and the preserving of life, they do not promote dishonesty, cowardice, or arbitrary killing.

Sometimes, apparent moral differences are not moral differences at all but factual differences. For example, many people who live in India do not eat cows because they believe in reincarnation — that these cows may possess the souls of deceased human beings. In the United States we do not believe cows have human souls. For this reason, we eat cows — but we do not eat Grandma. It appears on the surface, therefore, that there is a fundamental value difference between Indians and Americans. This is a hasty conclusion, however, for both cultures do believe it is wrong to eat Grandma; the Indians, however, believe the cow may be Grandma. Thus it is a factual and not a value difference that divides our culinary habits.

In short, Ken, the answer to your question is that I believe there are indeed objective moral values. I personally find this to be evidence of God. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. However, objective values do exist. Therefore, God exists.

This leads into the next set of questions:

Who am I to say I am qualified to decide what’s good for the future?

How do I know I am doing the right thing?

And for that matter, how can anyone say they are qualified to decide what’s good for the future?

I think what you’re asking here is along the lines of ultimate life philosophy. I’ll share my beliefs; perhaps they can give you some perspective while you try to answer these questions for yourself.

I believe that God is mysterious. I also believe that God can sometimes be subtle. However, I believe that God has also made many things extremely clear so that we can know what He wants us to do with our lives. I think that the foremost on God’s desires is that God wants us to know Him, trust Him, and obey Him. For me, I believe the Bible has provided me with the inspired word of God so that I can get a chance to know God, have good reasons to trust Him, and know what God has told me to do, so I can obey Him.

Originally Posted by Mark 12:28-31

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

I know that a lot of people find a deep amount of satisfaction from participation in FIRST. I do too. However, I know in my heart, that I have never found engineering, science, or even inspiring that knowledge in other people to be ultimately rewarding. I don’t base who I am, or my lifelong accomplishments on how many people I’ve taught to drill holes, weld, or pick gear ratios. Personally, I believe that even if our country falls to the bottom of worldwide lists of technological innovation, that’s okay. I believe there is much more to life than things like FIRST, and I also share the opinion that people who try to commit their entire life to something like participation in FIRST this will have a difficult time finding ultimate lifelong satisfaction.

So Ken, that’s what I believe. I hope that you’re successful on your endeavors to find your purpose in life, and that you can find the answer those questions for yourself.

Again, I’ll close with this disclaimer.
I’m not going to argue about God’s existence or the validity of my beliefs in this or any other thread. If anyone would like to write me an email, send a private message, or IM me, I’d be more than happy to talk with you. Please don't reply to this post to try to rebuke my beliefs and take this thread off topic. Please feel free to share your own.

I hope this helps,

Matt

[michael_obrien]

I agree with Matt about concrete moral values, but would just like to add that there are many philosophical ways of arriving at this conclusion as well, such as objectivism. I won't try to argue with Matt's ideas about god, I'm just suggesting that, if you're interested in philosophy as your questions indicate, you look more deeply into all the different philosophies that have been expressed over the years and decide for yourself what makes sense to you.

[Adam Y.]

Though, I can’t help but wonder, is creating problem solvers enough? The way I see it, part of being a great problem solver is the ability to discover the problems in the first place. If your every day engineers and scientists are the problem solvers, then it is people like Dean Kamen who are the problem discoverers. And not everyone is like Dean Kamen when he invented FIRST to solve the problem of shortage of scientist and engineers, or Segway to solve the problem of transportation. It takes open minded people who are not afraid to think differently, and have the courage to try new things. And that I believe is something beyond FIRST and its goal to inspire high school students about science, technology, and engineering.

I have always thought that the problems were very easy to find. It was just a matter of solving them. There are really just too many big problems right now that do need to be solved. Disease, famine, the electrical grid, new fuel sources, and terrorism are just some of the problems that need to be solved. I feel that it is a matter of what you want to do and not what needs to be done.

I have no answer to those questions. Frankly, it took my entire life time just to get to these questions. But since I am here already, I might as well start looking for some of these answers.

I think it was Hemingway who said,"Life is a joke. Once you figure it out you die."

[Ken Leung]

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

I have always thought that the problems were very easy to find. It was just a matter of solving them. There are really just too many big problems right now that do need to be solved. Disease, famine, the electrical grid, new fuel sources, and terrorism are just some of the problems that need to be solved. I feel that it is a matter of what you want to do and not what needs to be done.

I think it was Hemingway who said,"Life is a joke. Once you figure it out you die."

I am not as concerned about my own interest as I am about the direction of the kind of inspiration you can do to the future generation. It's more like a question about education really:

What do you want to teach your students?

1. Teach them to memorize facts and formulas so they know how to apply those knowledge when they grow up.
2. Teach them to be problem solvers, so they can look at a problem, do the necessary research/experiment to gather enough data, analyze the data and make sense out of them, and come up with the best solution for the problem.
3. Teach them to think for themselves, so they can discover their own problem to solve.

Obviously you can't teach students to be independent thinkers without teaching them how to be problem solvers, and you can't teach them to be problem solvers without teaching them facts and formulas. The important part though, is that at each step, you take the time to remind them not to just memorize everything they were taught, but also, understand why they should learn those facts and formulas, and how they can apply them to a problem they've never seen before, and why that problem appear in the first place.

I used to ask my parents why I have to take math, and they responded with "don't ask that; just learn it as you are told to." That didn't really help inspire me to be a better student. I just felt it was unnecessary work. If someone bothered to tell me why there are pages of problem in the math book, and why I have to solve at least 20 of them a night, it would've motivated me a little better.

I grew up in a culture with an education system that's designed to mold students into obedient workers who will do what their bosses tell them to. I am extremely grateful that my experience leaded me to understand that method is not the only way to educate students. It also leaded me to think about the entire point of education, and its role in the society, which is why I asked those questions. I feel that by asking specific questions, it helps me focus my mind into one thing at a time.


I don't know if Life is a joke or not, I've certainly have my share of "interesting" experience that lead me to suspect there is more to life then what you can see with your eyes, but we won't go there in this thread ;-).


P.S. WC, sorry for not noticing your reply inside the quote in your post, I just noticed that. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to this thread.

[Al Skierkiewicz]

Ken,
I for one, would like to pass on enough to let students recognize when there is a problem. If you can't recognize something needs to be done then how will you know that you have to do something about it. Facts and formulas are just the tools we use to make and fix the things around us. They are as neccessary as a screwdriver or drill and everyone will find their favorites and use them regardless of which career they choose. If I could pass this on (and I don't believe I can any other way than by example) I would like students to know that I revel in the challenge. It is fun to find something to fix, to tear it apart and find how it works or why it failed. I just love being able to assemble a system that works or put a piece of equipment back on line when it has been fixed. A wise man once said, "If you can find a job you really enjoy, you will never work a day in your life." I have worked in the same place for 31 years next month and it has just flown by. It seems like only yesterday that I started.
I too was searching for answers as to why I needed to learn something. I finally found my own answers in my last year in high school. When that light went on, I began to learn at a much greater pace than I ever had before. I saw that education was a step to getting the tools that I would need for the rest of my life. I continue to learn as much as I can, pledging to not sleep unless I have learned one new thing each day. I will not pass up a learning opportunity if I can help it. That is why competition is so wonderful for me, I learn so much. I see new methods, materials and people. Robots are art, they can be enjoyed as much as going to a museum. But there is something museums will rarely give you and that is the opportunity to meet the artists.
I don't believe that life is a joke, it is for real. But... there is a lot in life that is funny and I believe it is part of the grand plan to make us happy while we are here.

[Alaina]

I'm always in awe by people who think more than they have to...

Ken,

It is the people you meet at FIRST that are the real reason the eperience is so rewarding. You are responsible for one of my "Golden FIRST" moments. It was at an off season event. You were trying to open a coffee can with a tire iron. I guess no one had ever taught you about how to use the weird doohickee on the Swiss army knife.

I laughed at the time and shook my head - "Our future engineers!" I thought. But all technology is like that - you go a lot further if you have a good foundation - and FIRST does that so very well.