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Thursday, March 25, 2004
COLUMN: Jim Brunelle
Copyright © 2004 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc. | ||||
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An example of the latter is laying claim to being the birthplace of the Republican Party, an honor that local tradition for years ascribed to Maine, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. This month, the Wisconsin town of Ripon is having a big blowout in celebration of the idea that it was the site of the launching of the GOP in March 1854. That would put it well ahead of Maine, which did not get around to organizing a new party -- with temperance and opposition to slavery as its principal planks -- until August. Well, forget all about that, say the good burghers of Exeter, N.H. The Republican Party was founded in their town in October 1853 by local lawyer and one-time congressman Amos Tuck. It's all there in the historical records, which the late Gov. Hugh Gregg rummaged through to produce a book asserting New Hampshire's primacy in the formation of the GOP. So when Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold last week slipped through a Senate resolution honoring Ripon as the party's birthplace, Sen. Judd Gregg (Hugh's son) was not amused. Neither Gregg nor fellow Republican Sen. John Sununu were on the floor for the vote and were caught flat-footed by what a former president of the Amos Tuck Society back home called a "Ripon ripoff." To which the residents of every state except Wisconsin and New Hampshire can only give the heartfelt, if somewhat sour, response: "Who cares?" Historians care, of course, as do small-town local traditionalists and flat-footed politicians, but the rest of us are free to look upon it as so much inconsequential trivia. So, when is being No. 1 important? When it produces something of broad public benefit, when it sets the standard for others to follow, when it seizes the imagination of outsiders and triggers productive emulation. An example is Maine's pioneering school laptop program, which fits all the criteria cited above and then some. The program has withstood so much public and political scrutiny in the four years since former Gov. Angus S. King Jr. first unveiled the idea of providing Maine's seventh- and eighth-grade students with their own individual Apple iBook computers, you would think it would no longer be the subject of controversy at the Statehouse. But it is. The Baldacci administration's plan to extend the program to high school freshmen next year -- a logical move to ensure that middle-school kids who have now had two years of experience with this scholastic tool will continue to have it available -- has triggered a new debate about what should now be regarded as an established element of educational policy in Maine. Members of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee are currently trying to digest the governor's plan to finance the expansion -- a lash-up of transferred funding, bond issuance, lease-purchase agreements and downloading much of the cost into local school budgets -- is a perfectly legitimate debate. What we do not need, however, is another drawn-out and bitter discussion about the worth of the program or a move to eliminate it as just another costly bauble that could be trimmed harmlessly out of the budget. Sure, money is tight this year, but to interrupt the laptop program for tens of thousands of Maine youngsters just entering their most productive learning years would be far costlier in terms of both educational and economic development. Meanwhile, the Legislature's Education Committee is scheduled to hold a work session today to discuss the expansion program. Several members of the committee are said to be conflicted about whether it's worth continuing. It is. This is one educational program that's really working. Kids are excited about learning and teachers are excited about teaching kids who are engaged in the learning process as never before. School attendance is up and the number of school dropouts has declined. Maine's business community can readily see the advantages of this visionary program. A broad coalition of businesses is investing in it, confident of the benefits to be derived. And Maine still enjoys the broader reputation of being first in this experiment. Other states are copying us. Outside business and industry leaders are aware of Maine's educational advance into a technological world. There are legislators who are still not getting the message that what they set in motion three years ago has taken off and put Maine in the forefront of educational innovation. Let's hope most lawmakers understand the worth of occasionally being No. 1 in something and keep this terrific program thriving. Jim Brunelle of Cape Elizabeth has commented on Maine issues for more than 35 years. His e-mail address is jbrune@maine.rr.com. |
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