Education: beyond political regimes

The education sector is the most proactive in the quest to help students with the benefits of the Information Technology (IT).

It isn’t about to engage in the usual merry-go-round fashion that government handles IT. Thus, it has moved ahead using federal grants to defray the installation of IT that would be used throughout our public school system, if not, already.

It goes to illustrate why our educational estate always outlasts political careers of knee-jerk politicians. Without begging the issue, simply ask how many politicians have actually buckled down to plan their day, much less, the approval of telecommunications legislation now languishing the Senate.

The benefits of establishing the legal infrastructure of Information Technology may be a bit too complicated for the nimble minds of ill-equipped senators. Perhaps, there’s the lack of clarity of understanding what benefits would be derived in all sectors of the Northern Marianas Community by allowing the establishment of IT’s legal infrastructure. But then, what else is new other than a new day wasted in regurgitation!

What’s ironic though in all that is said about the importance of education is the missing equation between what’s said and what’s done in subsequent days. Everybody turns into an instant expert. We have consultants peddling agendas here and there hoping to fall into the grace of lawmakers while the real expert views (teachers in classrooms) are conveniently neglected. What’s wrong with this approach? At best, it’s disoriented, at worse, an advance, not forward, but to the rear!

Obviously, there’s a single factor that turned education issues (scholarships too) into one messy exchange of, well, disorientation: the lack of money while needs continue to jump by leaps and bounds. In the process, acrimony took center stage when we should have quietly resolved issues as reasonable men. But I suppose platitudes and self-preservation took precedence over reasoned analysis headed into an election year.

Furthermore, the future of college education is in cyberclassrooms or online degree programs. This is being offered in colleges and universities across the country. It turns the urgency of setting IT’s legal infrastructure here in place for this and other educational needs. This approach to college education could just well mean less money for airline tickets, lodging and incidental needs under the current scholarship program. Our kids could attend college in the comfort of their home right here in paradise.

Establishing the legal infrastructure for IT is a major undertaking that would set the ball in motion in bringing the CNMI at par with the rest of the global community. Its establishment means determining how do we provide families with personal computers for their children’s use. This is yet another challenge for leadership to resolve with creative financing schemes so that every household has access to the tons of information that is available in the information superhighway. And there’s no two ways about it. Either we do it or forever play catch-up when most others have gone ahead to embrace the new and requisite tool of this millennium.

The only time that the CNMI loses out on this issue is when it never takes the first proverbial step on that long journey into a brighter tomorrow for our children. Si Yuus Maase`!