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I don’t care how leftist or rightist they are, I think it’s nice that the President goes on TV to encourage students to work hard and do a good job.

Folks,

The problem is not President Obama giving a speech to schoolchildren. The problem is with the Department of Education 1) circumventing local school boards and arranging this directly with principals/administrators and 2) the lesson plan created by the DoE and distributed to the schools which is specifically prohibited by the enabling legislation which created the DoE.

I remember watching this as a kid! Strangely enough, I am now a raging liberal. Oh, but if they’d only made me fill out a worksheet, I’m sure that would’ve made all the difference.

David Brooks (conservative commentator, who I greatly respect) was asked about this controversy on NPR, and he quickly dismissed this topic, “I hope the public out there can distinguish between these “death panel Republicans” and the rest of us.”

Truly, the right-wing fringe element out there that gets upset about this sort of topic needs to be ignored.

I wonder how the people that are so upset about the President maybe influencing their children feel about those same children being influenced by the schools teaching of all Presidents beginning with George Washington.
What a crock. The people in this country get more stupid everyday.

Oh yeah…it all comes down to race for the liberals. Please explain how voting FOR someone because he’s black is any less racist than voting AGAINST him because he’s black. A white man with the same liberal voting record, lack of experience and radical affiliations never would have made it to the primaries…or even received security clearance for a government job. If Barack Obama were not black, Hillary Clinton would be president. I can get over that my side lost. What pains me is that this great country REALLY lost.

Cathy, voting for someone is not the same as voting against someone. This is political sociology 101. Let’s take race out of it for a moment, because people in this country don’t know how to talk about race w/o getting angry. If I’m a woman and I vote for a woman, then I’m voting for someone with whom I identify because I want to see a marginalize identity (i.e., women) succeed to the highest office in the country. That doesn’t make me sexist. However, if I’m a man and I vote for a man because I don’t want to see a woman in the White House or I allow negative stereotypes of woman to shape my vote (no matter whether I realize I hold those stereotypes or not), that’s sexist. It’s the same thing with race. And, (to others) if it were just about the lesson plans, people would just reject the lesson plans and show the speech. Let’s stop pretending we do things on principle when we do them for partisan reasons.

The objections to Obama’s speech are not sincere — this is part of a cynical, orchestrated campaign to raise a protest no matter what he does. These same people would be screaming if he said “have a nice day!”

Now that it’s widely known that Reagan and George H.W. Bush addressed schoolchildren, the tinfoil-hat crowd is retorting that they spoke to schools but not to schoolchildren nationwide. But that’s false too. Bush opened his October 1991 speech with this sentence:

“Thank you, Ms. Mostoller, and thanks for allowing me to visit your classroom to talk to you and all these students, and millions more in classrooms all across the country.”

Here’s the link to the text, in the George H.W. Bush presidential library:

http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3450&year=1991&month=all

And Reagan began his speech by offering “a special hello to those of you who are watching on C-SPAN or the Instructional Television Network.”

Christopher, I appreciate your civil response. However, what if you’re a man and you vote for a woman, not because that woman is qualified but because you want to prove your not sexist? Voting for someone based on skin color is the same as voting against someone based on skin color. I have no doubt that Obama won the election because he is a black man. This country wants so desperately to move beyond the race issue and so many believed that electing a black man president would do that. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened…the race card is played everytime someone disagrees with or questions the president. (See Kristina’s post above) Martin Luther King dreamed of an America where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Ironically, the opposite happened in the last election.

I’m black, get over this obama being black and blah… blah. Like some of us black people can’t make up our own minds. I don’t like him. I can’t stand this come together mess while he is tearing down what it really means to DREAM. I’m also sick of some people trying to lump him in with a great man like MLK. He will never come close to MLK. I have been on both sides of the health care. I’m on the better side of health care and have been for many yrs now. So wthat other presidents have speoken to kids.

They did not make it as big of a deal as he has. Give me a break. He is not a god. Now let him raise or fall as any man does. Stop making excuses for his lack respect of our country. I’m a soldier. I started to learn how to act the 1st day of joining the army. If we must know how to act. Then he needs too. He did bow to the leader of another contry. Oh, I’m also a Chaplain Asst. so when he said the we are not a Christian nation. the Chaplain and myself are some of the first people the troops meet at every post, base in country and overseas. So why believe his lie. I’m not making any of this up this and more is part of my job. So, him being black is not the issue. He is messing up.

Just before I go. You know his vist to the troops at Walter Reed hosp. At first he was going to lessen our health care due to not seeing as many injuerd troops. We put up a big stink. Well I had just got back from deployment. I had to go through a very detailed med process to list any all concerns after serving about 22 mos away from family. the troops found out what he was doing and we spoke up. So, no he did not go the troops because he really cared. This is the real man you support. now tell your friends if you wish. Trust me I’m not a hard of bitter person.

umm, a whole heck of a lot of white people voted for Obama, do you think they did it simply because he was black? All that aside, he is our President, the election is over. Kids think Presidents are pretty cool, lets at least cherish that one last position in the nation that the youth respects without us adults ruining with partisan junk.

This is a good speech, a strong positive message for our children. Laura Bush is right; we should respect the office of the President.

With his emphasis on personal responsibility conservatives should like this speech, and would if the President was named “John S. McCain” or “Sarah Palin.”

Maybe Obama should change his name, his party, and his skin color. Or maybe he should do the job he was elected to do.

to Claris or anyone,

How is partisaan… junk is that not what obama ran on in the first place. i said there is enough blame from all sides. as far as not cherishing the position, you have no idea that i don’t. i don’t care how many white or any other race voted for him. i care that he does the job right. it matters. trust me. he can have all the speeches and the kids or anyone can call him cool. when it comes down to it. he just has to do the job. so far he’s been caring about how he looks and only what he wants to push though, not if it really is wise or not, it matters

No, Susan, the anger IS about political ideology, as well as race.

And simplistic solutions never solve problems. Term limits mean experienced veterans are aced out for rank and sometimes unqualified beginners; the Prop. 13 initiative that started the tax revolt nationwide has nearly destroyed California (where I live). E-Z solutions don’t solve complex problems.

I suggested that term limitation would occur naturally if US citizens were not hampered by the unnatural direction in which our politicians have taken our country. They have done it by clouding our vision with complexity. Instead of repealing bad law, they amend and create layer upon layer of new bad laws.

Yes, the anger IS about partisan politics on this blog at this moment;
but it has been, is now and will continue to be fueled by BOTH parties to divert the American people from being true participants (by representation) in their own republic.

What happened with Prop 13 in California was done legally (the California state constitution allows Voter Referendum).

Because an idea is seized upon by many, does not make it a bad idea. A revolt occurs because people choose to participate in it. Most people possess critical thinking skills. Arrogance, condescension and anger occur among other thinking people who do not happen to agree with their thinking.

“Divide and conquer.”
Julius Caesar

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
Leonardo da Vinci

Knee “jerk” Republican
You may have a knee, and you may be a jerk, but neither you nor David Brooks has any credibility as a Republican. Why do you think he is chosen by the left-wing Lehrer Report to offer straw man representation for the right?
You offer absolutely no opposition to the Democratic perspective. Republicans are sick of you RINOs running around claiming to speak for us.

So, Jill, did you object when President Bush addressed the nation’s schoolchildren in 1991, and when President Reagan addressed the nation’s schoolchildren in 1988? Or, if you didn’t have kids then, now do you think you’d have objected?

Jill, you have every right to object to others’ giving your children advice on how to succeed in school and in life if you want, but just be aware that that’s not a mainstream view; it’s pretty unusual. Most Americans are happy to have positive role models give their children advice on how to succeed in school and in life — messages that support the parents’ goals for their kids.

Interestingly, in the usual situation, teachers and other educators get bashed for NOT selling kids on this message effectively enough.

You ask why more parents aren’t angry for the specific reason that you are — well, that’s because you have a really unusual point of view.

Most people who are objecting are clearly objecting because it’s Obama — or rather, professing to object; few if any of these objections are sincere. Mostly they’re play-acting, a manufactured ploy to get on Page 1 with more anti-Obama protests. They don’t want to hear about it that Bush One and Reagan did the same thing; these conservatives clearly would not object to their kids’ hearing Bush One and Reagan, so that inconvenient fact messes up their outraged protests.

I have heard some people say that parents’ concern is that their kids will find Obama too compelling and convincing, and decide that maybe they’ll agree with some of his views.

I was trying to decide whether I’d object to my kids’ hearing a Republican president for the same reason. I can’t even keep a straight face at the thought of my kids’ finding George W. Bush (the only Republican president during their lifetimes) compelling and convincing. Not a worry — they’d be free to listen to his speeches all day long.

Reagan and G H W Bush both clearly politicized their speeches. In Reagan’s case, it may have worked. The mantras of his true believers are “Don’t Do Drugs” and “Taxes are Evil.” In G H W Bush’s case, it didn’t work. “Study Hard” and “Don’t Do Drugs” are positive messages. “Rat on your friends” is not exactly un-American; it is, however McCarthyistic, and counter to very strong American traditions.

In Obama’s case, this is clearly not a political speech. It does however, have political ramifications. To whit, the students will someday be voters. They will view him the way their parents or grandparents view Kennedy and FDR. If he follows through, progressives will respect him, conservatives will curse him, and he will go down in history as a great or terrible President, depending on the lens thru which one looks. This is the whole gist of the Republicanista cry against Obama.

At the risk of being accused of shameless self-promotion, which is as American as apple pie, this is discussed in my song, “We Had The Will, We Found The Way” on http://www.xbcoldfingers.com, and http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/xbcoldfingers

If the speech was’t targeted at him, why should he be forced to watch it? That’s time out of his day spent listening to somthing that, in your words doesn’t pertain to him. and I feel sorry for those children who don’t have positive role models, but you’ve made my point for me. Why don’t these kids have at least one positive parent supporting their children? why does the presdent have to emotionally support these children? and as I said in a previous post, i feel that this will just compound the problem. It’s reinforcing the idea that we don’t need to parent our children, the president will do it for us.

Jill,
I generally dislike arguing public policy based on individual examples and anecdotes. That being said, it’s sort of difficult to sort out the future surgeons when planning ANY day’s “programming.” Every kid in a school watches or none at all. Schools that across-the-board said “feh” are yet another matter.

There’s absolutely nothing in that speech that even remotely suggests parents ought take a siesta on parenting their children, so why suggest that red herring?

In general — not about you or me as parents — I believe, as does the President, that the best motivation is internal — not parent-pleasing.

Jill, with all due respect, I think you are being a little obsessive about this (I apologize if that offends you). No one is trying to parent your kid. From what you describe, he seems quite bright and capable. That doesn’t mean he cannot use encouragement. I know people who have gone through medical school, and sometimes someone just telling them “you can do it” makes a significant difference. If I came across your kid and I said, “good job young man, keep it up.”, I’m not contradicting anything that you’ve taught him. On the contrary, I’m reinforcing it. If you don’t want your kid to hear the speech, that’s fine. But, there are several great parents and teachers who do. The more important question is wouldn’t you rather your kid go to school with kids who look up to positive role models? If so, be happy that they have someone to emulate (like Obama) rather than MTV, ESPN, Spike TV, etc.

I personally did not see Reagan’s speech in 1988 while I was in school. I would speculate that it was because many school like ours did not have cable TV to access the speech. I was not in school in 1991, but would still think many schools did not have cable television. Definitely not compared to what students have today with either satellite or cable tv and Internet.