Eating lead in 2000

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Posted by Joe Johnson.   [PICTURE: SAME | NEW | HELP]


Engineer on team #47, Chief Delphi, from Pontiac Central High School and Delphi Automotive Systems.

Posted on 5/31/99 8:48 PM MST


In Reply to: inspiration or motivation? posted by Daniel on 5/31/99 7:45 PM MST:



Daniel from GRT and soon to be from Berkeley, and Frank from Wildstang and now with MIT are not your typical U.S.A. High School student.

Both are outstanding leaders and I am sure will end up being outstanding engineers some day.

But...

They are not typical by any stretch of the imagination.

Could most teams find leaders of their quality from among their ranks? I don't think so.

So the question is what is FIRST?

Mr. B. thinks he has the vision, I think I have the vision, Daniel has yet another view.

Are we all blind men trying to discover the essence of an elephant (it's a rope, it's tree, it's a snake, etc.)?

I think that perhaps it is time to say that we are talking about at least two different animals here.

Mr. B. is convinced that this program belongs in the schools. Given that, then all the arguments about sustainability etc. carry the day.

JoeJ is convinced that this program belongs in partnership with businesses. Given that, then many of my arguments make sense.

I am ready to propose that there are 2 different elephants.

Yes, it would be great if there we a high school sport that was somewhat FIRST like, but had the same game for a number of years with a well defined kit and a reasonable price tag and a season of (relatively low budget) events, etc.

Yes it would be great if we got on TV and changed the entire culture of America, that involved high school kids in the design of the robots, but did not pretend high school kids could be turned into engineers in a 6 week program.

So...

When do we split into two leagues? The high school sport league and the inspiration league.

I, seriously, think that there is value to both. (so much so in fact that I have been working with a former coach form our team to get the funding to make a similar idea, the Pontiac Robotics League, a reality -- those who have attended one of our team's 'FIRST in a Day' competitions will know sort of what I am thinking of)

Does this add to the confusion or does it address some issues?

Joe J.