What a great idea! President Obama will be addressing the nation’s kids at noon on September 8, which is when most schools start back up for the 2009-2010 school year. He will be telling them to study hard, set goals, and all those other inspirational things that we adults say to kids to try to get them motivated for the next 180 plus school days.
The radical right and its best pot stirrer, Fox News, are all wrought up now over President Obama’s plans. This will be the first time a sitting president has addressed the nation’s school children, so apparently change is a very difficult thing for many folks. What seems to be adding fuel to this new fire is some accompanying optional lesson plans prepared by the DOE. There is an elementary set and a secondary set. They look like any standard set of DOE lesson plans to me. No new news here.
There are even people on a particular (choke-ahem) news show suggesting that parents might want to keep their kids home so they don’t become indoctrinated. WHAT? There is some serious paranoia floating around out there. Was President Bush endoctrinating kids on 9-11 when he was reading the goat book to a classroom of school children? How would that excuse read: Der Scule, My little johnny did not go to this here scule becuz the prezident wanted to git in his brain?
Snide remarks like Superintendent in Chief are being hurled about also. Well yea, What a great mission–give every kid a good talking to about how to succeed in school. Radical thought there. Hopefully, President Obama will be a good role model as an instructional leader. Hopefully he will set the stage for a successful school year. Maybe some kids who would otherwise be tuned out and turned off might, just might listen, and be inspired. And if 1 kid changes who might otherwise be a drop out, mission accomplished.
This newest Radical Right drum beating is enraging because it hurts the kids of America.
Damon Weaver’s interview with President Obama
Secretary Dept. of Education Ann Duncan’s letter to administrators
Crazy is right. My children NEVER heard me say anything personally negative about President Bush and they never will. I simply said we didn’t agree on some issues, but that was the great thing about American, we have the freedom to disagree. The level of viseral hatred towards President Obama is just unfathomable.
What is he doing that is so awful? Turning the economy around, dealing with the mess in Afganastan? Trying to fix a healthcare system that WILL eventually bankrupt America?
Oh wait, or maybe he took us from a surplus to a deficit, brought us into a war on erroneous intelligence causing the direct death of thousands of our soldiers, continually misled the country about a connection between 9/11 and Iraq, mishandled the environment with a bogus “clear skies initiative” , threatened to fire the one person who could tell congress how much the medicare prescription plan would REALLY cost, gave the middle finger to human rights and tortured people, suggested that “brownie was doin’ a helluva job” while people were suffering in the streets of Katrina, etc etc etc.
my bad, that was the PREVIOUS administration. Imagine, imagine just for a second if those charges were laid at the feet of President Obama? I shudder to think of what the consequences would be.
And America’s newest crazy, Glenn Beck, chimes in on President Obama addressing the school children. Beck is what I would call UN-American.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/03/obama-schoolchildren-spee_n_276544.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/why-it-matters/why-it-matters-the-obama-speec.html
The suggested activities are ED dept silly. Most canned lesson plans are idiotic, boring and no one uses them. TV ed programming always has them. What a flap over nothing. The people in a lather are as stupid as the beaurocrats who wrote the lame0 lesson plans.
I seriously doubt if the White House sent worksheets to every classroom. Where is the evidence for that wild hair suggestion?
Wow, more Huffingtonpost articles, what a surprise… Can you tell me exactly how Beck is ‘UN-American’?
“What is he doing that is so awful? Turning the economy around, dealing with the mess in Afghanistan? Trying to fix a health care system that WILL eventually bankrupt America?”
Don’t know if you have noticed but unemployment is above 9.7% now. Did he promise that stimulus would prevent unemployment from going above 8%?
Afghanistan is getting worse and worse by the day. Gen. Stanley McChrystal intended to ask for 28k more troops but was directed by the White House to not even ask. Nice, I suppose that is Obama’s way of ‘dealing with the mess’, by telling the General to not even bother asking for the resources he needs.
Don’t look now but we are already bankrupt… Adding an additional $1,000,000,000,000.00 (conservative CBO estimate) for the purposed health care bill is going to do what exactly?
Some misinformed people are screaming racism as the reason for the back lash against this idea. The fact is that if George Bush had tried something this stupid moveon.org, the democratic party and many independents would be screaming in anger.
This is just a massively stupid idea. What Were They Thinking?