“We are here to do big things — and
we can do this without Congress.” This
is a statement made by President Obama, as noted in the Washington Post, regarding one of the recent programs he
is going to be implementing in the near future. Although it seems that this is
not the first time he has had this view when following out his visions, I will
be purely focusing on one he has recently proposed called ConnectED.
To briefly describe the program,
ConnectED is an initiative that is going to help place high-speed broadband
internet in 99% of America’s schools. This will aid in access to online
textbooks and lessons for children as well as lesson planning and organization
for teachers. I, having experience in teaching, cannot dispute the fact that
the internet opens many doors in the realm of education. There are more resources that can be utilized
nowadays that were never dreamt of in the past. However I do not think that
technology is the only way for our children of today to succeed. Yes, in
today’s culture we are extremely dependent on technology for things, but I
truly believe that the majority of students can learn without the internet as
the sole medium of their learning.
My initial reaction to this
presidential decision was, “Who is going to fund this program”? Ah, and what do
you know, I will be funding this. And so will you. The estimate for this
program is that it is going to cost between 4 and 6 billion dollars. The
administration is planning to raise everyone’s phone bills for the next three
years to provide this funding. After doing further research, I found out that
at the moment, it is claims that each individual will only be paying around 12
dollars over the course of 3 years.
Referencing Obama in the quote
opening this post, the reason this is even happening is because he has found a
way around sending this through Congress.
In fact, Congress cannot have any meaningful say in regards to this at
all. It is all up to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC
). The FCC has the right to boost fees to fund certain kinds of programs via
the universal service fund (USF). The USF is what was used to fund the
“Obamaphone”.
In my opinion, why not have the
communities decide if they want their schools to take a part in ConnectED? I
have no doubts that the program would be beneficial for certain schools and
this way the people who actually want to partake in it will be the ones funding
it. Then the overall required funding would not be in the billions and all the
ways that the administration is talking about decreasing unnecessary funding
could actually be performed.
Paying a little extra per year on
my phone bill no longer infuriates me. What infuriates me is the fact that
Obama has made it such a point to avoid congress with certain issues. Congress
was created to represent the people
and Obama is now setting a precedent that he does not find the peoples’
opinions to be important. Congress has made it clear that they would not
approve this ConnectED initiative.
Obama appears to be very passionate
about integrating technology into our schools. According to some sources, Obama
has long expressed frustration that countries such as South Korea have embraced
technology in the classroom much better than the United States has. I argue
that there are also numerous ways
that South Korea runs their education system that we have never tried
implementing and probably never will. That particular subject however will have
to be addressed in another post rather than this one.
What saddens me is a comment made
by the president, included in an article in the Washington post, which basically states that America is too busy focusing on
the noise rather than what is meaningful. By noise, Obama is referencing the
NSA privacy issue that has many American’s questioning the motives of our
government and the fact that the people’s rights seem to have been thrown out
the door. The way I see it, if the
president has to “sneak around” (for lack of a better way to phrase it) to
start a program and avoids having the voice of the people/Congress reflected in
the decision and is requiring everyone to contribute whether or not they want
to participate seems quite devious to me. If he is as passionate about this as
he says he is, he should find a way to promote this in a way that also promotes
what America stands for. I would say that Education is important to the people
of America. So why go behind their backs (and force them) to better their
education when you could have their support?
This article was written by guest writer Kylie, my wife.
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