The fair sucks. There's no wheat to glean, it's just chaff. Let's not fool ourselves. But how is it we are here, and how do we get out?

As I'm sitting here and judging this project, the questions and criteria in the rubrics are strange. They are utterly nonsensical. I'm judging a Lego robot dance on a mat, and this rubric is asking me if it is an appropriate use of technology. It hits me what the whole problem is.

These projects do not have a context. They are contrived. They are like drummed-up school projects that are here for the sake of learning, and the learning is for the sake of getting a job, and the job is for the sake of money, and the money is for the sake of purchasing something.

You hear this said of school sports as justification for practically employing students full-time: "But they're developing life skills, they're building character!" Yeah. But they could do that by actually doing something worthwhile. Kids know the difference between make-work and real work. They'll do things that are 'fun' or 'cool' that catch their whimsy. But they may not have the sticktuitiveness. And they certainly won't develop a well-rooted sense of meaning from it. You can be a farm kid your whole life, but the footballer who didn't make the NFL is just wallowing in the glory days. The same goes for the 4-H projects.

Okay, so what might a better program than 4-H, or a reform of 4-H, look like? Here are some ideas - not all are right, and most definitely incomplete.

Projects should be for the sake of some productive end, and judged on the merits of how well they achieve this. They should be judged _in context_. It is nice that you're able to make a pop tab representation of Michaelangelo's David. _Where are you putting that, exactly?_ I see this especially in robotics. Show me how you automated some process of your family business, or made a better alarm clock that actually gets you up, or something that really improves quality of someone's life.

It doesn't have to be big. In fact, those little un-sexy incremental things can be more helpful. And in engineering and technology, showing that you can choose the thrifty simple option shows far more wisdom and actual problem-solving capability. Maybe it really is a servo motor on a timer that does the trick. It's far less fake - more rooted - to show the dumb simple thing than the flashy waste of time.

Business should be involved. Not in the sense of corporate sponsorship. But in the sense of "hey, I built a toolbox for my dad's auto shop" or "I wove tablecloths for the restaurant across the street".

This truly brings out the 4-H pledge: for my club, my community, my country, my world. Why build all this stuff? Not for personal development. For the benefit of others.

Technical prowess is one thing. Being able to actually make it matter to your neighbor? Incredibly valuable. Incredibly rewarding. Incredibly rich relationships.

The fair is just a culmination, of course. It's the place where we show off all this stuff we did throughout the year. A sort of display the likes of the Ox-Cart Man going to town and selling his excess. As soon as the projects are just "projects", rather than outflows of what is really necessary in a household, they become fake make-work.

Maybe to work towards this we will have to expect that projects be brought in "used" condition - not pristine and scratch-free, but actually gritty and beat up from incidental use in the past few months.

Judging rubrics may need some revisiting to reflect this: putting 'economical' as a line in judging; was an appropriate amount of time used on this?

Maybe not everything needs to be subject to this economizing logic. There is a case for art, for really "impractical" objects. And perhaps they should have their own standards. But for the practical arts - for welding, for robotics, for aerospace, for crops, graphic design, and more - the "bottom line" (even if not truly monetary), the utility, should be the framing context.