Jonathan Storm: TV12 doc says the kids are all right

Perhaps we are not all doomed.

An inspirational documentary pops up today on WHYY TV12 showing high school kids - frequently portrayed as empty-headed, telephone-text-crazed louts - cooperatively exercising intellect and ingenuity.

Actually it's on WHYY Y Info 12.3, which is the mouthful name of one of the two 'HYY offshoots made possible by the shift to digital TV. It's Channel 258 on most Comcast systems and worth searching out.

The show, Gearing Up, was first telecast on the main channel in September. Today, it goes at 10 a.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m., and 9 p.m. on Channel 12.3. It's the saga of four high school robotics teams as they participate in the annual nationwide FIRST competition.

That stands for "For Inspiration of Science and Technology," and it's the baby of Segway inventor and all-around idea-man Dean Kamen, who shows up for a minute to say there's nothing wrong with America's fixation on sports and entertainment, but maybe it's a little too extreme, "crowding out the opportunity to celebrate science, technology, inventing, creating, thinking, solving problems."

The four teams profiled - reform-school boys in Colorado; students from suburban St. Louis; a small all-girl team from Baltimore; and the Miss Daisy team from Ambler's Wissahickon High (who seem to be the New York Yankees of the annual contest, minus the insufferable attitude) - celebrate all those things, building enormously complicated robots.

Not profiled, but succeeding notably in the Philadelphia region competition that's a big part of the show, are the Cyber Crusaders of Lansdale Catholic High School.

In the contests kids from all the schools get a box of parts, with no instructions, for building robots to accomplish specific goals. They can add any other parts they see fit, within guidelines, but they have to buy them. The Lansdale students sell about 1,500 hoagies every Super Bowl Sunday to raise some extra money.

To someone who hasn't seen the inside of a high school for years, the kids are just flat-out extraordinary in their organization, work ethic, and imagination, as dedicated to their teams as the footballers on Friday Night Lights or the warblers on Glee.

There's an exchange student from Afghanistan on the Baltimore team. "I want to be an engineer," she says at the end. So does a girl from St. Louis. "This whole experience has changed my life," she says.

This show may change your opinion about teenagers.