Must focus on education

Tony Pellegrino discussed about the importance of education and the essence of focusing on getting every young mind here to partake in the acquisition of lifetime skills.

Mr. Pellegrino essentially said that when one applies for a job, the company seeking prospective applicants is primarily interested in what skills you have to offer. If per chance you don’t have at least the basics–a high school diploma–other more qualified applicants would be given the job you’re applying for.

What needs to be understood by local applicants is the acquisition of basic education being your personal responsibility. The company advertising job openings isn’t the place to earn a high school diploma. The equation, therefore, involves your personal initiative to enroll and stay in school in order to prepare for “Life After Campus”.

It brings into focus the need to establish trade schools in our junior and senior high schools where the less academically inclined can take vocational courses to learn a trade. The curriculum should also include introductory courses in entrepreneurship, i.e., how to form a small business in plumbing or carpentry where there are hundreds, if not, thousands of households and businesses here who need such services.

We should also strive to bring vocational courses to the industrial level when the Northern Marianas College turns into a four year institution. It should teach the essence of computer and technology literacy such tools being the thing of the future. The use of computers and technological advancement in the trades should enable those who wish to bolt out on their own to maximize efficiency in their small business operations.

This should be the joint agenda of leadership in all sectors so to accelerate the establishment of trade and entrepreneurship courses during the first part of the year 2000. No longer can we ignore our failure in this area. It is time that leadership converges with a commitment to help build a trained cadre of indigenous work force. Let us forge ahead with such plans, now!

Hopelessness among the jobless

Having spent many hours talking to the jobless at the grassroots level, it seems apparent that failure is on both sides of the spectrum. That they aren’t academically inclined and have fallen by the way side, we’ve equally neglected and dubbed them as failures and focus our attention on academic naturals.

This neglect is even more apparent today than ever before. We should have paid attention how best to see them through their academic difficulties so we offer recourse where they can acquire lifetime skills. A lot of factors play in the whys certain students aren’t motivated to study and learn. Perhaps the biggest factor is growing up in a broken home. It is a factor we’ve overlooked and taken for granted that each should be able to muddle through all the difficulties he or she faces daily. Yet, we see promising young minds go to waste when he or she’s forced into the dungeons of sifting between the struggle of growing up in a broken home versus all the demands of adolescency.

If I may say so, we were collectively out of focus and negligent of their needs. We’ve failed to encourage them to pick-up the pieces and move on. But we can rectify our obvious negligence anew in the new millennium. It’s the way to granting the unemployed a chance to being productive members of our community. Si Yuus Maase`!