That was Innocuous Enough

A few thoughts on the President's Speech to America's school-children...oh wait, let me rephrase that. According to the "Language Police" America is "banned because it suggests geographical chauvinism unless it refers to all people in North America, South America, and Central America; refer instead to people of the United States."

So, let's try this again...

A few thought's on the President's Speech to the school-children of the United States...

1. The speech was incredibly innocuous, and frankly, not overly inspiring.
2. I was never worried THAT the President was giving a speech. More so, I was worried WHAT the speech would be about. I had been afraid, based on the original lesson plan that was released, that the speech would be much more political and more agenda-driven. With that said, I am curious if the speech we saw today would have been the same if there had not been any controversy over the lesson plan mentioned above.
3. To me, as an educator and someone who has worked with children on a daily basis, the biggest issue here is the level of hubris that it takes for someone, even the President, to think that he can give a 15-minute speech and somehow accomplish something (namely encouraging and inspiring school-children)that a group of professionals has trouble doing over the course of a 180-day school year.
4. At it's core, the speech today encouraged students to "work hard" and "stay in school." However, I find it ironic that the National Government, and indeed this administration has made it so incredibly easy to NOT do these things. I'm talking here about food stamps, nationalized/free healthcare, cash for clunkers, loan forgiveness after the housing crisis, etc, etc, etc...
5. Finally, if this speech is somehow connected to a larger agenda (I know, now we are delving into the world of conspiracy theory), then it has occurred to me that the President really didn't have to say anything about this agenda because there are many out there who will spread this message for him...like the teacher in the video below or the little girl who was interviewed shortly after the speech who said that the President's message was "if you fail yourself, you fail your country." A startlingly nationalistic statement which seems to come straight from Orwell's 1984.

This video is from before the election last November, as you will see. The thing that is startling about it is that the teacher professes to allow her students to have whatever opinion that they want. She also says that she supports those opinions. However, as the video progresses and students begin to say that they support John McCain she appears obviously disappointed. Then she tells one girl, whose father was deployed in Iraq at the time, that if John McCain is elected he will keep the troops there as long as it takes, even if it takes 100 years. She basically implies to this girl that if John McCain is elected her dad will never come home from the war, but if Barack Obama is elected he will end the war (a campaign promise he has yet to make good on) and will, therefore, bring her dad home...



The President didn't HAVE To give a rousing speech today...The "bipartisanship" that he promised during his campaign has already so polarized the country that he doesn't have to do much to get his agenda discussed in the news, on the web or in the classroom...

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