I really am starting to seriously worry that we are just about doomed as a country:
White House officials seemed to be caught flat-footed by the response to what they say was a simple back to school address by President Obama to students across the nation — and has turned into a firestorm…
Some parents are talking about keeping their kids from school on tuesday to avoid the president’s remarks. The White House says it will release a copy of the text of the president’s address on monday so parents and educators can see that the message is entirely about learning, staying in school and taking personal responsibility…
There is some historical precedent for presidents speaking to students in nationally televised addresses. President George H. W. Bush did so in 1991 and President Ronald Reagan even talked politics with students in 1988.
Nonetheless charges from Republican officials that President Obama is seeking to indoctrinate students—unsupported by any real evidence—have been flying.
I weep for the lumpenproles who have been swept up in this insanity.
Update: Gherald points us to a good Economist post:
This speaks not just to Republican opposition to a Democratic president; it also indicates a profound level of generalised paranoia. The man is attempting to insulate his children from any outside influence. He’s not just scared of Barack Obama; he’s scared of his neighbors. The statement puts one in mind of those 1930s Scot Tissue advertisements that piggybacked on anti-Communist hysteria: “Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?“ The outside, the alien, socialism, the unclean, infection, pollution. They’re coming for the children!
The opposition to Mr Obama’s speech is fundamentally an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the president. It should be resisted. No liberal parents pulled their kindergardeners out of class to avoid having George W. Bush indoctrinate them with the esoteric neoconservative messages embedded in the text of “The Pet Goat”. (No wonder he was so insistent on finishing the reading!) But it’s also part of a broader atmosphere of paranoia that has taken root in American child-rearing in recent decades. In 1969, 50% of American children walked to school; that is down to less than 15%, in part due to fears that their children will be kidnapped, even though violent crime against children hasn’t grown at all. Those parents are increasingly reluctant to vaccinate their kids, for fear that vaccines are secretly harmful—i.e., that the entire edifice of modern scientific medicine is an elaborate conspiracy to harm their children. Teachers have their licenses revoked for letting kids climb up hills. And so forth.
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(THE GRAPEVINE
ummm . . question . Will it be mandatory for these kids to listen to Obama's address?
This would depend on the class, if it is social studies or political science, yes. This is just a continual response from the nut section that cannot get over losing an election to a black man. American school systems are a strange mix of local and national systems. Most standards and money comes from the local tax system while some lunch programs, general standards, and operating funds come from the federal level. For instance a teacher can be fired if they have somehow upset a local school members wife as several instances in Texas have shown.
Probably mandatory if their teachers decide to make it mandatory, as with most things in school. If teachers can make you read any other presidents' remarks, they can make you listen/read a contemporary speech.
DIA is , as usual.
well ok. I am not an american but i identify more with democratic ideology .If i was an american i would vote for the democrats and am a big fan of obama . But here's the thing , if i was an american and i was told that it is mandatory for my children (if i had any) to watch an address by george w bush in the school , then i dont care what they told me it would've been about , i would not want my kids to watch his speech . Now of course if they themselves made a choice of watching it then , it's ok . You cant force your children but yeah i wouldnt be too comfortable letting them listen to lunatic talk like iraq has something to do with the so called war on terrorism or the axis of evil or attacking iran .etc .
If your children were attending a class that covered American politics or government, It would be ok for a teacher to require your children to watch a speech by GWB, including about Iraq, the war on terror, and the axis of evil. This is important stuff, as much as we may disagree with it.
Instead of sheltering your children, you should teach them to think critically and not believe everything they hear from government officials.
But if you insist on not allowing your child to attend a class that watches/discusses a speech by Bush, the teacher might arrange for some make-up work or just throw up his hands and decide it's your problem if you want to keep sheltering your children and not allow them to learn for themselves.
like i said , i would not be comfortable with them listening to george bush's speech but if they want to watch it then it's ok. There's a difference between people who people that it is upto them to decide if their children and other people's children should watch a certain president's speech or not and ones who are simply uncomfortable with a situation . And being a pakistani and directly being affected by bush's crazy schemes to rule the world :p yes i have every right to be atleast uncomfortable with the idea of my kids listening to his speech . His government supported a military regimen in pakistan that came into power by overthrowing a democraticratically elected government and "ruled" Pakistan for 9 years. Yes that’s how that dictator pervaiz musharraf came into power which probably for you Americans was a good guy supporting bush’s “war on terrorism”
In fact what most Americans don’t know is that in a lot of ways he was actually facilitating the extremist terrorist groups so when the problem gets out of hand , he can say to the American government look here are the terrorists and I am the only one who can handle this problem for you thus continuing to be the “king” of Pakistan with American government’s support and possibly taking huge amount of bribes in terms of money and I can go on and on and on . So yeah I have every right to be uncomfortable with my kids listening to bush’s speech
Well I being uncomfortable is probably ok. I imagine most parents are uncomfortable about many things their children usually go through, such as (to pick the obvious things) sex education, and when they start dating.
But specifying "if they want to watch it" isn't ok here. Teachers have every right to make decisions about how to cover topics as long as they're appropriate to the class being taught. If you don't like the way a teacher teaches their subject matter, you can try to change teachers or schools. But they need to be able to teach about controversial topics (e.g. the war on terror, marxism, nazism, religious history, evolution, or whatever.) without students arbitrarily insisting they shouldn't have to hear about it.
"Teachers have every right to make decisions about how to cover topics as long as they're appropriate to the class being taught". I disagree . If teachers do have every right to make such decsions then what if lets say a conservative, right wing , religious teacher starts teaching my kids about hating blacks or gays or some other such ideas ? should I be ok with it since it is up to the teacher to decide what or how what to teach them . Secondly i am not against tecahing children about the unpleasant aspects of politics or history.etc . On the contrary i believe that americans should be taught about dark aspects of their history or the not so good decisions made by their governments in relation to foreign policy but if we were talking about a chapter in a book or a whole subject that a kid just decides to not study then it is different and wrong . Here we are talking about a speech .
I dont think if you miss a president's speech then you are missing a huge lesson on your country's history or politics . People get an idea about how their country is being governed not by the sugar coated words their rulers say in speeches but what the country actually becomes when it is ruled by them . We pakistanis hardly care about a president or prime minister’s speech because we know they will say good words in them but the real situation of the hunger, poverty , disease and lawlessness in the country is quite apparent to everyone. Your children will know themselves what a great man obama is by his actions which I’m sure will benefit your country and rest of the world and not necessarily by watching his speech on tv. All I am trying to say is , I know his speech only contains words of encouragement for the youth of your country but it shouldn’t be made mandatory for them to watch it .
You do not have to be okay with anything, but the teacher does have a right to teach the class topic as they see fit. They are accountable to principals and school boards or maybe PTAs--not to individual students or individual parents.
Your general recourse when you're not okay with what's being taught is to explain why to the teacher, and maybe decide to switch teachers or switch schools. That's why school choice is so important.
As for what you should be ok with, I think you should be ok with kids being shown Bush's speeches, Obama's speeches, or even (in, say, a history course) speeches or writings from any relevant person, be they Gandhi or Hitler, Jesus or Socrates.
I think you should also be ok with your kids being taught about "hating blacks or gays or some other such ideas". These are real things of real relevance in appropriate classes (e.g. history or sociology). Being taught to engage in the hatred, OTOH, would cross the line for me--that doesn't belong in a classroom any more than a pornographic image would belong in a ten year-old's biology class.
emphasizing the point of "about" and "engage" was unnecessary and irrelevant because it was quite obvious what i was trying to say . i was talking about kids being taught to engage in hating blacks or gays. You are just arguing for the sake of argument and again teaching them a lesson in the book about bush's government and the things he did or his speeches , i am not against that . how will they learn about it if they are not not taught. i am just saying that that speech should not be made mandatory to watch . The ones who are against obama will not start loving him after watching that speech and the ones who like him will make sure to watch it anyhow even if someone tries to stop them
If it is made mandatory when the republicans are trying to make their kids not watch it , it will only give them the wrong idea that they were right and there was some “hidden agenda” in the speech that was being pushed forward by forcing their kids to watch it . You can never persuade an opponent by forcing them into anything . I learnt that lesson in my life but in a different respect . I was forced to embrace Islamic views and ideology just like the rest of my family but everytime they forced me , I became more repelled by islam . So here’s the thing , there is a harmless encouraging speech by a president whose life in itself is inspiring to so many people in America and outside . They don’t want their kids to watch it fine ,their loss. The real problem arises if they say that not only will their kids not watch it , they will make sure that other people’s kids don’t watch it either. So then some action should be taken against them because they trespassing on other people’s right .
What you were trying to say about hate may have been obvious to you, and I'm not suggesting you were trying to say otherwise. But the distinction is important for explaining my position: being shown a speech by Bush/Obama is appropriate, and being taught about hate is appropriate.
> i am just saying that that speech should not be made mandatory to watch
Well, you are wrong. Watching a speech by Bush or Obama may be as mandatory as watching any other president's speech, so long as it fits the topic of the class.
In the specific case of a class about politics, it would even be appropriate for the teacher to require watching candidate's political speeches (from the party conventions, for instance).
If a student refuses to participate in such an assignment, the teacher might make an alternative arrangement. But if the teacher felt the student's reason for not participating was illegitimate, he could give the student an incomplete or a poor grade on a quiz/exam/homework that asks questions about the speech.
I should mention, however, that the particular speech Obama is going to be giving soon may not have direct educational value, and could be more of a "study hard, it's important!" message. So this sort of thing probably shouldn't get graded. A speech by Bush on the war on terror, however, definitely has educational value for a class discussing the war on terror or Bush himself, and watching it could be important for a student's grade.
yeah long comment , going on and on about the same thing that has already been established.. What you are trying to do is to prove that the kids should be taught about every aspect of history , well i never said they shouldnt be.With tecahing about history , of course you learn about the good people and the bad people.You cannot just omit the dark aspects of history because you dont like them . So kids should be taught everything that happened in history , good or bad and I agree with you on that point completely . so hopefully you wont try to prove the same point on which I already have agreed with you.The thing is teaching someone about a certain president in the past and his speeches is another thing and being made to watch a current president's speech is another. Now, by not watching his speech , they are trying to show their disobedience or dislike for their president which in every way is their right .They have a right to dislike a president . Afterall you are living in a democracy not a dictatorship. If it were a dictatorship and the dictator's speech was on tv then there would've been no problem in making everybody watch it and persecuting them for not doing so.
But in a democracy they can make a choice for them and their children . Now whether it is right or wrong that’s another story
Please try to pay more attention, because I am not saying students "should be taught about every aspect of history".
I am saying that a teacher of an appropriate class may (not should) decide to teach students about particular things, and that the teacher may. require such things for the class.
Depending on the class, this may include historical events, or current events, or both.
You are correct that there is a distinction between historical presidents and current presidents, but this distinction bears on whether the class is about history or touches on more current or recent events like the war on terror. The distinction does not bear on your unsupported claim that teachers should never require students to watch a current president's speech. Thus, teachers' discretion trumps your claim, provided the class is an appropriate one for teaching about the current president (e.g. a class on American Government, which I took in school)
Right to dislike a president does not equal a right to ignore coursework in a class that has reason to cover that president or the topic that president gave a speech on.
By analogy, a right to dislike Christianity does not give you a right to ignore coursework about it in a class on history that includes coverage of the history of Christianity (which I also took in school)
By the same token, we are living in a place with freedom of religion.
But if we take a class that covers history, we should not expect to be able to refuse any exposure to historical events that involve a religion we don't like (or that portray our own preferred religion in a historical, unflattering light).
And if we take a class on religion (such as my school's "World Views" class that discussed many religions), we should not expect to be able to avoid in-depth discussions about the tenets of religions we don't like.
And if we take a class that covers politics (like the American Government class I took), we should not expect to be able to avoid coverage of candidates and parties we don't like.
Etc.
Democracy and these freedoms do not entail a freedom to insist every class not require learning about things you don't like.
But they do (usually) entail the right to share your own counter-views in class, to tell the teacher why you disapprove of their class, or to search for a different teacher, different class, or different school that you like better.
Depending on the class, teacher, and school district policies, classes in America can have assignments that require students to watch news, research political leaders, and report on their views of the new, This can happen as early as 5th grade. It is part of our educational process to create thinking people. Not that it always works.
. Now of course there's a different between obama and bush but it is not a matter of what we think is right but what a person's rights are and if it is my right as a democrat that my kids are not forced to watch a republican president’s speech then it is also the right of a republican that their kids are not forced to watch a democratic president’s speech. I read somewhere that now the white house is releasing transcript of the speech. So that changes things. If even after reading the transcript and making sure it is simply an encouraging speech asking kids to stay in school , do well in their studies and serve the country.etc the republicans are adamant that the speech should not be shown in schools despite it not being mandatory to watch , then yeah then it is plain ignorant on their part
You also should consider that most of the Republican objections are part of their political plan to attack anything that the president does, and they are making themselves look very ridicules doing so. By their shrill screams of outcry they are moving the discussions to the fringe of the political spectrum. So it is like the tea baggers, the birthers, those who believe in the death panels, that the president is a Moslem, and the people who are convince that the Russians are digging a tunnel under the ice pack to invade Alaska. If anyone would have suggested that Bush had such an agenda these very same people would have been trying to tar and feather them. All this hype simply boils down to the fact that they cannot believe that they have lost an election to a black man.