Lifetime Education / Lifelong Learning

A four point strategy:

1) A City educational cable TV channel

The first step toward lifetime education can be a major step and it doesn't require the City of Pittsburgh spend one cent to implement.   Currently the only educational programming on the City's educational cable TV channel is an occassional training video for public safety personnel.   Yet there is ample high quality educational programming available to enable the City to provide 24 hours of educational programs a day.   Rather than waiting to be elected, I have petitioned the current administration to add more educational programming to its educational channel.   If provided, it will give the city's cable customers some of the highest quality educational programming available anywhere, without adding any financial burden to our taxpayers.

How can this happen?   Under the City's cable franchise contract with Comcast, the City gets three cable channels: one for public access, one for government, and one for education.   It is currently underutilizing the latter.   Comcast can provide a direct feed of the available programming or the City can set up its own schedule for rebroadcasting it.

OK, but what about the programming?   Who's going to provide and pay for it?  A 24 hour per day service of high quality educational programming is available through a satellite feed from the Annenberg CPB Project, the nation's premiere educational programming supplier.   This service is provided to schools and public agencies for free.   The programming provided is of the highest quality and, in many cases, college credit can be acquired through participating colleges and universities.   The CPB Project was the source for most of the educational programming which once appeared upon WQEX-Channel 16, before the WQED management decided to cash in on WQEX by selling its license and shut down all its educational programming.

The arrangements necessary for connecting the Annenberg CPB satellite feed into one of the City's cable channels can be easily set up and provided immediately.   This resource and its associated opportunities for academic credit would be just the first step toward a broader approach to lifetime education.

2) Doing more

Numerous educational resources are available and examples of educational programming elsewhere can serve as models upon which we can build:

• The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is making all of its course work available for free to the public online through the Internet, the nation's Information Highway.  MIT has been actively advocating that other institutions, such as Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, do the same.
• Kentucky offers excellent educational programming and courses to its residents via the Internet.   These are designed for people to study on their own in conjunction with the oversight and individualized attention of remote instructors.
  
• The City of Pittsburgh Schools offer a number of excellent educational materials online for use by its student and their parents.   There is no reason these cannot also be useful for others too.
  
• Venezuela has for at least a quarter century offered educational opportunities through independent study programs which enable adults to tailor their study to fit their own schedules, their individual abilities, and their personal needs.

There is no justifiable reason why we in Pittsburgh can't be doing more here.   By looking to other's successes and using the resources we have available, we can make real, lifetime education an accepted matter of practice for everyone in Pittsburgh.

As mayor, I would draw upon my own private experience in making available computer equipment and software to the disadvantaged areas of the city for free.   I know that area companies freqently discard perfectly functional equipment when they upgrade and it can be put to much better use than being dismantled for scrap.   I know that the City of Pittsburgh can easily use these resources to create and stock community educational centers throughout the city, setting them up in City owned properties which are now underutilized.   We can also provide economically disadvantaged individuals and families with equipment which will enable them to plug into the world of tomorrow.

Most importantly, we can do all of this while still holding to a tight budget that will enable the City to get out of its current financial hole.

3) Tapping our tax exempt educational institutions

But more is needed than facilities and equipment.   As mayor, I would work in conjunction with the City's fine institutions of higher education to make sure we develop effective new educational opportunities for all city residents.

This past spring I participated in a discussion on the subject with faculty and administrators from some of them.   They are already reaching out to provide resources and involvement to area communities.   Unfortunately, though, to date it seems most of the recipient communities are surrounding suburbs.   Regardless of the actual ratio, it's clear that not enough is being done for the City of Pittsburgh.   But this is a starting point.

The management of the City's institutions of higher education know, as we all do, that they owe much to the city.   They occupy vast properties which are currently off the tax rolls, and they consume city services for which other residents must then pay higher taxes.   There is strong argument for having such not-for-profit enterprises pay taxes just like everyone else.

These are not public charities but, in effect, huge businesses which don't pay dividends to stockholders and owners.   Instead, they use any extra earnings to expand their operations or to pay bonuses to management.   In the past, in order to silence any discussion of removing their tax exempt status these institutions have made commitments to voluntarily contribute to the City's expenses.   Unfortunately, their record in honoring those commitments has not been the best, repeatedly falling short of their promised payments.

One thing which can make it more palatable for institutions to pay their fair share is to negotiate payment of part or all of that share as in-kind services which have a higher value to the City than it costs the institutions to provide.   A significant portion could be as an in-kind contribution of educational services to city residents.   This would help the community as well as making it more likely these institutions will finally carry their load.

4) Cultural change and social sustainability

A public policy of Lifetime Education constitutes a very real cultural change which must be deliberately pursued and transitioned into place.   The true measure of its success will be in each individual's personal practice of lifetime learning.   Such must evolve differently for each person, but it can also be hastened through the provision of excellent programming and resources.

Those who consider their education a thing of the past will need to be shown that they need to make a new commitment to personal growth, if they don't want to be left behind.   Special projects will need to focus upon developing alternative opportunities for learning in order to reach those who are completely turned off by thoughts of going back to school again.

Lifetime education will also require changing official notions of the traditional classroom as the primary means for providing education.   It will require new measurements of achievement and ways in which we assess and identify a person's capabilities.

None of these are insurmountable, and new inroads are already being made which can inspire and help lead our way.

Lifetime Education is a logical response to the guiding question:   "who do we have here and what do we need to do to take care of us?"   It is absolutely essential for us to implement it if we are to have a sustainable society in today's world.

As a journey of a thousand miles, it must begin with a first step.   For the City of Pittsburgh, the first step can begin with the provision of a full-time programming on the educational cable TV channel for city residents.   We can build upon it with an expansion of neighborhood centers in the months and years that follow and incorporate the nvolvement of the city's fine institutions of higher learning -- all without jeopardizing the City's financial recovery.

We can move with all possible speed toward having Lifetime Education throughout the City of Pittsburgh by electing David Tessitor, as the next mayor of Pittsburgh.

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