



“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.



