Hey! PSS, NMC and NMTI students

School is almost out for the summer break. Here is a plan for you that can be instituted before you reconvene in the fall. The 300 kids I’ve talked to love it and I think you will too. It’s a simple plan, easily implemented, saves lots of money and lets kids be kids and young adults be treated like the adults you are. This system lets you control your future, not old-fashioned adults that probably can’t even program a cell phone. It’s a little more involved than I’ve outlined below but these are the basic tenants.

• STEP 1: Buy 13,000 touch screen tablets, they cost about $60-$70/each, one for every kid from Pre-K through NMC and NMTI and every teacher. You can fund them through a $5 per case tax on beer or just take the $900,000 for the Museum and really put some money to good use for a change.

• PRE-K TO G3: For grades Pre-K to G3, load each up with 80 or 100 free educational apps, at least 10 each in different subjects for each grade up to G8. No it won’t ruin the kids. You get rid of the tables and chairs and let them sit where they want and talk to each other and show each other what they found. It’s amazing to watch. One hour tablet, two hours outside playing. The sociologist and psychologist in each teacher need to watch and keep notes on each child’s behavior. Teachers don’t need an expensive tracking program, you can make one on Excel or download one free. Every kid will make and upload a video to YouTube every month from their own tablet, with the teacher’s help of course. Singing, acting, dancing, speaking, playing. Whatever the child does. If a child shows aptitude in any area, let them make more. Never say no because this is an esteem building lesson. These are the grades that kids learn reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic, social skills and communication. Never mind proper English until G9. The metric system will be taught.

• G4 to G8: For grades G4 to G8 you need high speed WiFi. YouTube will be the primary medium of instruction, Google secondary. It is in these grades the kids are introduced to job classifications at BLS and at least one hour per week will be spent in this site. In all grades the class will be split into about equal groups of four to seven and left to collaborate on projects assigned. By 7th grade, the groups will designate their own projects. Every week one member of each group will rotate to another group. Every project will be outside the classrooms, at least one day a week for G4 and G5 and two days a week for G6 and G7 and three days a week for G8. They will be real projects, not some rinky-dinky crap like I’ve seen 14-year-olds make at Hopwood. All these projects will incorporate multiple elements of learning, social studies, environment, arithmetic (not math), history, culture, science, technology, communications, and others. Every project will be videoed and uploaded to YouTube. There will be no desks, buzzers, bells, whistles or sirens going off herding kids into another place or time.

• BEYOND G8: At the beginning of the 8th grade, students will start really thinking about their future and what path they want to take and what knowledge they will have to acquire to achieve that goal. By the end of the year they will be 90 percent sure what they want to do. They will have three distinct directions: Technical, vocational, or academic. Technical utilizes technology, computers, engineering, chemists, biologists, botanists, marine specialists, doctors, architects, artists and performing artists, astronauts, environmentalists, scientists and the like. Vocational will be mechanics, plumbers, construction, electrical wiring, equipment operators, chefs, hotel workers and other hands-on trades. Academics are lawyers, publishers, reporters, librarians, teachers, politicians, business persons, and others. You don’t need algebra or have to read Charles Dickens to drive a truck, you will have to have calculus to be an architect. You won’t have to have world history to be an actor but you will have to have world history to be a history teacher. You will only take subjects directly related to your interests.

• G9 is the dividing point. Depending on the students’ choice they will spend as few as three more months in vocational school for maintaining a bush cutter to eight more years for an intern.

• There will be some students that change their mind after a period of time, could be six months, could be six years. Makes no difference, it’s up to them and they can just re-enter at any start of classes, in any class they would have had to start in had they just continued.

I’ve done studies with kids and I have been taking university courses for over two years with my tablet, the Internet (thank you JKPL and Mobil, Subway and Winchell’s and the other free hotspot sites) and YouTube/Google and I know it works. I’ve never bought or read a book. Another thing I’ve learned is that every kid and young adult has to have their own tablet and that some will figure out one thing and another will discover something else, but, they will always share what they find between themselves and they do better if no adult is interfering. Just leave the younger ones alone with their apps and just leave the young adults alone period. Adults can observe and keep notes.

Your schools have plenty of room, your teachers all have the basics. Two hours and they can be experts in this new curriculum and they can actually use 90 percent or their present lesson plans. If there are any Doubting Thomas’ out there, contact me at garydubrall@gmail.com.

You are about 11,000 strong. If you demand change, probably nothing will happen because they still think of you 14 to 18 year olds as “kids.” But it will also tell you a lot about how and who runs the CNMI and where they think your place in it should be.

It’s time for the PSS to demand, and the folks on Capital Hill to fund, this for the future of the CNMI. It’s also time for companies like Docomo and IT&E to put routers around the islands where the kids and young adults live, as a community service maybe?

Gary Dubrall
Chalan Piao, Saipan