Even if you are aghast at the vitriol spilling at public meetings about health care reform proposals, you can understand that many people are worried about what changes to our current health care system will mean for those currently insured as we attempt to insure the 46 million Americans who have no coverage. But to oppose an address by the president to students about taking their studies seriously at the start of a school year--why? At best, it’s “silly,” as Education Secretary Arne Duncan put it. At worst, it’s downright frightening, uninformed, and terribly, unnecessarily alarmist and disrespectful.
Why disrespectful? Because Obama is not the first president to address school kids via the tube. Republican presidents Ronald Reagan did in 1981, George H.W. bush in 1991, and George W. Bush did in 2001. Bush senior focused solely on education, while Reagan slipped in a plug for low taxes and the line-item veto, and George W. mentioned the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Yet, there was no major outcry from the left about the presidents spreading “propaganda” across classrooms. Even Laura Bush, the oft-quiet former First Lady and a former teacher, says she is for the president giving this kind of speech to school children.
Reuters via Yahoo! News: Wakefield High School students in Alexandria, Va. listen to President Barack Obama's speech
As a back-to-school assignment for all of us, especially those who love a Highlights Magazine Hidden Pictures kind of challenge, take a look at the address released by the White House over the Labor Day weekend to find just what it is people are so certain they will find.
When the president talks about himself, it’s about his journey as a student, from his time as a kid in Indonesia when his mom would wake him up before dawn to study what she knew he wasn’t learning in school to the times he admits he wasn’t always as focused as he should have been on his school work. It’s a back-to-school talk urging children of all ages to take personal responsibility for their own education. How can anyone argue with words like these?
“Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide."
Or these, after he talks about his own second chances and opportunities:
"Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.”
It’s a personal speech about personal responsibility, the importance of staying in school and working hard to get an education. It’s filled with rich examples of real students and people who persevered against the odds. So, please, anyone who is dead set against their children listening to the president of the United States urge children to take responsibility for their school work, to study, to work hard, to develop skills and think about what they want to do one day, read the speech. And if you can find something in it you wouldn’t want your children to hear, do share.
Here's the video of his entire speech:
