“If your child is incapable of handling a 20-minute haranguing from a self-important public servant, he will be tragically unprepared for the new world. (Whom do you think he will be dealing with when he needs that hip replacement in 60 years?). Even if you oppose the president on a political level, it is empirically evident that the more one hears his homilies the less inclined one is to trust him. And Obama’s penchants to lecture us endlessly, to be the center of attention endlessly and to saturate the airwaves and national conversation are clear indications that he believes government is the answer to every societal, religious, economic, and cultural question we face. Why should your kids be immune? . .Why should we deny that he can elevate our schoolchildren from the abyss so they finally, after decades of neglect, can learn again? And who better to dictate the lesson plan than the president’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, a man who left Chicago’s school district with a meager 40 percent dropout rate? Honestly, if I’m going to be badgered and browbeaten by the president every day, kids should suffer a bit, as well. “
David Harsanyi, commenting on the recent Obama broadcast to American schoolchildren.
What this whole exercise makes me think of is the “stakeholder meetings” my former corporate employer used to have us attend, at which spokesmen for corporate management would set forth the goals and values that had been decided on and ask us all to join in adopting them as our goals and values. It couldn’t be phrased as “this is what we are telling you we expect you to do”; it had to be “this is what you are going to choose to do, with our guidance”—but choosing not to adopt them was, of course, not an option. And the writing letters that will then be used to hold people to account for the degree to which they meet their goals is exactly the way corporate management wanted us all to handle employee evaluation. We couldn’t just be handed a job description, or still less told “your duties are what we assign you”; we had to come up with our own job description and commit ourselves to meeting them.
All of which suggests to me that the real American class divide we are seeing now is between, on one hand, the culture of corporate employees; and, on the other hand, the culture of self-employed people and people working for small, informal firms . . . insofar as any small, informal firms can survive the present institutional climate. The self-employed are small in numbers, and make up a comparatively small share of the American economy, but I think Obama’s administration seriously underestimates the extent to which American culture still reflects their values and concerns. And that’s a big part of why they keep running into their public relations blowups: they’re all corporate people who are used to accepting life in big organizations and complying with its demands, and they don’t understand why anyone would not want to do so.
The problem isn’t the speech per se. The problem is the idea of a direct injection of curriculum from the Department of Education without the normal filters used to make sure than anybody who talks to our kids has their message and materials vetted by a hundreds (thousands?) of state and local boards who come at the message from different perspectives.
Mainlining a message, even from the President of the USA, is not a good idea for our children because it sets a bad precedent and the President should know better. I’m ticked off because he apparently does not and has not staffed education experts who know better either.
It seems to me silly and paranoid to try to censor and keep the children from hearing the President of the USA, which has been elected by a big majority. Children are not fools or dummies. They’ll hear and judge for themselves. The idea that you can shield them from nonsense or from socialist propaganda is absurd. The idea that this is the way to educate them is idiotic. You educate them by letting them have diverse experiences, not by preventing their exposure to ideas or speeches.
I don’t understand this outcry, this non-issue. Especially since it has been made abundantly clear that no child will be forced to hear the speech.
The right wingers are often as nutty as the left wing, sometimes more.
But TMLutas, don’t you trust the Great Leader?
Its all about the context. If BO had not used children so prominently and shamelessly during his campaign ( Remember those truly creepy videos.) It would not be a big deal . However the Education Department’s call for kids to write letters saying how they will “Help the President” together with the speech to the kids it looks pretty bad.
BO is getting to be boring, like an oversold celebrity he has worn out his welcome faster than I ever expected.
The Democrats claim that everything they do is “For the Children.” The GOP of course can get excessively sappy too, but they at least have a few small government types to restrain them, at least once and a while.
Politicians should not be addressing children in any form or shape without the express consent of their parents, just like any other strangers, only more so.
William H Stoddard makes some excellent points. I’ll add that many of us expect MSM coverage of the speech to be sick-making in its adulation, and who needs that? And don’t say we can avoid the coverage: just knowing it’s there is enough….
“… President of the USA, which has been elected by a big majority …”
Jacob, check the numbers. Approximately one third of US citizens voted for Mr. Obama; approximately one third voted for someone else; approximately one third chose not to vote for anyone.
Where is Obama’s “big majority”?
If he really had been good enough to earn a big majority, Obama would have been too smart to try this kind of juvenile political stunt.
Jacob, the most objectionable thing about Obama’s speech to the school children of the country isn’t his speech, which is likely to be bland blather about studying hard and earning good grades. Instead, what annoys so many people about it is the study material the Department of Education sent with it. When parents hear that their schools are going to instruct their children to write letters to themselves (WTF?) asking how they can best help President Obama instead of how they can best improve themselves or help the country, that hijacks the project from support of education to support of one politician.
Jacob, check the numbers. Approximately one third of US citizens voted for Mr. Obama; approximately one third voted for someone else; approximately one third chose not to vote for anyone.
Even if you only count people who voted, 52.7% can hardly be considered a “big” majority. A “razor thin” majority is more accurate.
“Jacob, check the numbers.”
Well, Obama won the popular vote by some 52% vs. 46% – that’s a big margin by US election standards.
also: Bush the first also made a speech for the children.
Oh, the number of guests that address children in school is endless. Writers, army officers, ex junkies, policemen, celebrities, etc. etc.
As to the teachers themselves – how many of them are nuts ? Have you ever been asked, as a parent, for your consent ? Once you’ve sent your child to school, it’s the principal who makes these decisions. Maybe it shouldn’t be so, but that’s how it is.
The President should speak to students every single morning. Soon his words will become as wrote and meaningless to kids as the Pledge of Allegiance.
If Obama is such a socialist, why has he reappointed Bernanke, who Reason magazine calls a Milton Friedmanite?
Why not? Children always do what they’re told.
An interesting sidelight: It is up to individual school systems whether they will “carry” the speech; a number have announced they will NOT.
Besides, there is no indication at what age level(s) a speech would be directed – age 8????
But, the idea has a point – it is prep for the next day’s speech to Congress Assembled. Also age 8.
Kindly refrain from insulting eight-year-olds. 🙂
Pseudonym, what is it about Bernanke a socialist wouldn’t like?
Agree with Messr. Stoddard. His argument matches closely with that of Joseph Schumpteter, in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. He notes that the experience of large bureaucracies is not especially different between corporate and government bureaucracies, and that the management of large corporations tends over time to prefer government takeover as a way to make their own jobs more secure.
Small versus big seems to be the present battleground.
Yes Jacob, I know that’s the way it is – what’s your point? And I didn’t send my child to school, he was sent there by the state.
Hey Pseudonym! If Obama is such a socialist, why has he appointed a rabid communist as his “green czar’?
what’s your point?
That Obama probably isn’t any worse that many of the teachers (that do speak to the children).
My point was agreeing with David Harsanyi – the opposition to the Obama speech, as voiced by conservative gurus, is silly.
It would be ok for parents to convince their children to skip the speech, on an individial basis, or for schools to opt out, but making it an issue in public debate is dumb.
Well, I disagree. Even when someone comes forth and makes the valid point that ‘conservatives do it too’, it still presents the opportunity to make a more general point such as the one I made in my first comment.
By the way,
If I were faced with this problem, I wouldn’t tell my children to skip Obama’s speech. I would let them decide for themselves. I never tried to forbid any article, novel, TV program, speech, activity or the like. I just tell them my opinion (on the speech itself, not on the question whether they should attend), and am confident they will be able to decide for themselves.
Y’know, it seems that most may have missed the propaganda accompaniment to the scheduled speech.
That, not the idea of an address (which has been done before), was what has raised hackles (and heckles).
Originally, it was accompanied by a trite bit from the Executive Branch (OoE) to raise the significance of the Presidency (which admittedly needs “help” – from any source). This was soon modified, but even the modifications have their own aura of centralized homogenization.
It has been a real cock-up! It has also shed light on the make up of the Administration at various levels and their attitudes toward the general population.
I don’t disagree with Jacob in the way to have one’s own children approach the speech, but I do disagree that it was somehow wrong to make an issue of this.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a presidential speech; that’s the norm. However, the problem was that the Dof E was turning it into completely undisguised Obama propaganda. As originally planned it would have been a fait accompli that viewing it, and using the DofE “lesson plan”, would have been mandatory. Now, after much public outcry, the lesson plan has been hastily re-written so that it bears a closer resemblance to something having real educational value. Viewing the speech is now optional, and many schools have elected not to show it at all. Of those which do, many are making viewing optional with the parents, which is as it should be. And I read that the White House is going to post the video onto its website today or tomorrow, in advance of its broadcast to the schools, so people can make real informed decisions. These are all good things.
So let the speech go on; it will anyway. But making a large public stink about it has had very beneficial effects. We need more of this, not less.
Jacob: what Laird said. I also always took the same approach as you with my son. If he expressed the desire to listen to the speech, I would have no objection. What I object to is the speech (or any other piece of propaganda) being forcefully fed to children without their parents’ consent.
These parents are missing an opportunity.
They should show up in the classroom.
And then ignore the teacher completely, give their children a lesson in proper handling of State propaganda.
Kristopher, the parents are having this opportunity every day their kids are in school being brainwashed by collectivist morons (which obviously does not apply to all teachers). Problem is parents do have to work for a living.
Showing up in the classroom and then ignoring the teacher completely is the job of the children. Parents should leave it to them.
It is routine for a President to make pretty speeches advocating good behavior and such. The have made them to school children before. If O had spoken of that for perhaps 10 minutes we would have heard no more of the matter.
As Laird and others have said, it was the added propaganda and indoctrination efforts from the DOE that caused the fuss. Otherwise the critics would have had nothing solid to bite.
As a principle I think there should be very few or no such activities by officials. Simply put, when a politician is speaking he is advancing his agenda. When he is not speaking he is thinking about how to advance his agenda.
Most of these guys can’t order coffee without first considering whether the berry pickers were oppressed. And they certainly will voice that concern before the cup is cool.
Screw David Harsanyi. How many kids does he have and how old are they?
Aside from the incredible hubris of the first woman president’s attempt to indoctrinate every school kid in the country on the same day, and aside from the fact that none of those kids under the age of ten should be under the supervision of the state for seven+ hours a day, and aside from the fact that most of what the first woman president will be saying to them is supposed to be pretty mundane, IT IS THE JOB OF PARENTS TO PROTECT THEIR CHILDREN. Period.
That being said, yes, kids need to know that people in authority can often by lying sons of bitches and that they should seldom trust them without a long history of trustability.
But teaching all that is the parents job – and this ‘historic’ moment by this whiney-ass president is merely one more little sweetie tossed in the direction of the teacher’s union.
That is all he has done so far….suck up to the unions. As templeofjennifer says, he must have no gag reflex.
No, it isn’t. There is a very good reason that societies set limits as to what constitutes an age when a child can make decisions for themselves. That reason — the inability to discern meaning past face value — is why, for example, children may not sign contracts or decide whether to drive cars.
Allowing a politician — any politician — a direct line into the mind of a child is an act of profound folly. It is precisely because children are so susceptible to propaganda that tyrants like Hitler, Castro, Chavez and the like spent so much time addressing children directly, without the filter of parental guidance, through the medium of childrens’ organizations (like, oh, the Hitlerjugend, Youth Brigades and so on).
It is why parents are supposed to control what their children watch on TV, read in libraries and hear on the radio.
And I’m sick of having the Leftist mantra of “oh, what harm can it do?” foisted on us in episodes like this. The lesson of history is that indoctrination of children can be incredibly harmful — and we ignore that lesson at our peril.
the inability to discern meaning past face value
Is that inability unique to children? I wish it were so.
“indoctrination of children can be incredibly harmful”
And of adults too.
But you don’t counter indoctrination by prohibition (of speeches, shows, books or pamphlets). You counter it by counter-indoctrination – by the parents explaining the speech to their children, after school.
I have a feeling those “high principled” gurus never opposed Bush 1’s speech. Their hatred of Obama, though well founded, leads them to extreme and illogical shrieking, sometimes.
Good point Jacob – one more good reason to get the state out of the education business altogether.
Byron York:
But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
When Reps speak the lefty gurus raise a principled argument against politicizing the schools, while when Dems speak the right hand gurus do the same. At least there is one principle all can agree upon, and then ignore as convenience dictates.
I have two questions:
1. How many teachers will place the speech in its proper context – a harangue delivered by a self-important public servant for the sake of gaining politicval points?
2. How many students will learn that lesson whether the teachers teach it or not?
Before you answer Question 2, keep in mind that Obama’s audience is all grade levels from K-12, not just teenagers.
Total nonsense. Parents’ lives are tough enough without constantly having to go round and undo the Dear Leader’s propaganda.
Adults can see through propaganda — which is why censorship in that sphere is bad — but children most often cannot.
I know that many adults can’t, either, but that’s a red herring and therefore irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
Barack Obama has just put a face on the enemy.
At most government schools (and many private schools) the same collectivist doctrines were being tauht long before Barack Obama became President of the United States.
The evidence is vast – but just one bit of it for a comment.
In what sort of country is the work of an unrepentant Marxist terrorist (Bill Ayers) considered suitable material for teacher training.
Bill Ayers, Education in Social Justice – a text book at Columbia University teacher training school (the “leading” teacher training establishment in the United States).
Barack Obama would be nothing (nothing) without the vast movement behind him – a cancer that has been eating away at the West fpr a long time.