Question:
Supporters of the Maine School of Science and Mathematics will be
pleased to know that the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee of the
state Legislature has voted 9 to 2 to recommend to recommend to the
Joint Appropriations Committee that funding for MSSM continue.
I urge MSSM supporters to contact their state legislators and encourage
them to support MSSM.
Answer:
The Maine Technical College System is one of the most successful
educational ideas that this state ever developed (or for that matter,
one of the most successful educational ideas developed in the US in the
past 50 years, since the Maine Technical College System is being used as
a model for the development of technical colleges of like stature
throughout the US).
For the record, SMTC was established at least 25 years ago, and has
nothing even remotely do with the MSSM or MSAH. It is a post graduate
institution that prepares students for careers in technical fields that
the University of Maine System (or should I say University of Maine
Dis-organization) deliberately ignores. The Maine Technical College
System, and SMTC, educates students who become plumbers, carpenters,
nurses, ECG technicians, waste management system operators, food
preparation specialists, marine biology system technicians, firemen,
policemen, etc. It prepares people to become the operators, the doers,
the people who actually keep our society functioning. And for this
reason, and this reason alone, it is a vital part or our educational
process.
If we did away with the University of Maine System today, it would not
make much of a difference 10 or 20 years from now. Sure, we would have
fewer lawyers and accountants (which in itself is a laudable goal), and
fewer teachers and engineers. But if we did away with the Technical
College System, we would have stopped up plumbing, falling down houses,
sewage floating in our basements, etc. And this in itself is a very
positive argument for keeping the Maine Technical College System alive,
strong and fully funded.
