Vincent Kituku: Idaho leaders jeopardize the future of our children | Reader's Opinion | Idaho Statesman

Traditional wisdom has it that when you are drowning, you don't want to ignore your swimming skills, you want a life preserver thrown to you and you must know where the shores are.

No one denies the serious thought and analysis that preceded the cutting of school budgets. But should such a reduction have even entered the picture? Is it a long-term solution given that it affects (negatively) the future of our children? Do our leaders know that we have entered a world market that is already forcing our children to compete for jobs with their international peers?

Shortly after the Idaho Legislature cut school budgets, The Economist ran a piece on what's going on in the global market that challenged the wisdom of that action. It reported that IBM has more employees outside the United States than it does here at home. Given that the future growth of any community will be (if it isn't already) dictated by technological advances as opposed to traditional resources such as timber and agricultural, the article noted that Chinese students spend more time with technological tools than their American counterparts.

I had just returned home from a visit to Kenya as the ax to cut school budgets was lowered. Kenya, considered a Third World country, is the world leader in the use of mobile phones for transferring money without the need of a bank account. The Daily Nation (July 2, 2010) stated that, "U.S. Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Judith McHale said her country's economy could benefit by importing the revolutionary mobile money transfer system from Kenya." She said, "We do not have such a system in America and we could import it to make it part of our national payment system."

Unthinkable 20 years ago, China is now a contending leader in providing technical expertise to developing countries (mostly because the West ignored, at a cost, those countries immediately after the Cold War).

What can Idaho leaders do to make sure that cutting educational budgets does not become a routine activity? While the merits and demerits of supporting huge prison and jail populations are debatable, it is still mind-boggling why we don't invest and build our youth instead of trying to re-build adults. Better education means more taxpayers and law-abiding citizens.

I am a 100 percent supporter of parental choice on where they take their child to school. My family is eternally grateful for the quality schooling experience our child had at the Meridian Technical Charter High School. However, the brutal reality is that it costs more to educate a student in a charter school than it does in traditional public schools.

Please don't give me performance comparisons - you don't see students in the halls of charter schools undergoing remedial tutoring. Those who can't make it academically are sent back to traditional public schools. Is this an area we can discuss and make sure we are not creating advantaged and disadvantaged schools supported by the same funding source?

It seems logical to wait a year or two before re-touching a road's surface rather than deny children the tools needed for the rest of their lives. When we cut educational budgets in response to economic turmoil, we are literally taking away the life preservers from our children. We are ignoring the fact they need educational tools to help us all swim to safety. We have to know and act with the future in focus, as the shores they must swim toward.

Dr. Vincent Muli Wa Kituku of Eagle is a motivational speaker.

via idahostatesman.com

Posted via email from Moments of Awareness