President Obama plans something unprecedented for September 8th, a pre-recorded address to every one of the nation's public school children, streamed over live on the White House Web site and on C-SPAN at noon EDT, a time when classrooms across the country will be able to tune in.
And parents around the country are in an uproar.
The way the White House is telling it, this was merely going to be a speech about staying in school, working hard and achieving your goals. What could be the harm in that?
As always with this president, the harm is in what you don't see unless you look beyond the surface.
As a side order for the Great Speech, the White House Department of Education made available a highly questionable lesson plan and supplemental material, helpfully passed along by the Democrat affiliated Teacher's Union leadership. Among other questionable things,. it called for students to write a letter to themselves about what they can do to 'serve President Obama'.
Not the country...President Obama.
I particularly liked this one, aimed at K-6 children: "Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?"
The White House officially backed off from the bit about serving Obama once it came to light, but I guarantee you there are plenty of teachers who will clandestinely assign this to their students along with some of the other questionable material.
Originally, the White House wasn't going to release the text of the president's speech until it was over. That's changed as well thanks to the uproar, and it will be pre-released Monday night. Of course, the speech has likely changed as well.
A great many of the American people don't trust Barack Obama to deliver an innocent, non-political speech and with good reason.
We have never seen in our history before a White House so engaged in a 24/7 campaign mode, so resistent to any kind of transparency and so willing to use the offices of the White House to flag and attack dissent and political 'enemies'.
Nor have we ever had a president so involved in the cult of personality, so unconcerned with being divisive, or so willing to lie and dissemble and so secretive about his past.
No matter how innocuous President Obama's speech may be on the surface, the underlying context of having him do this is simply wrong, because of this. It sends the wrong message, simply because messengers matter.
If President Obama finds that distressing, he has no one to blame but himself. And there's a simple remedy. Go before the American people, acknowledge that some serious breaches of trust have occurred, detail a serious plan to fix the abuses, unseal records, accept resignations where necessary, follow through on it and then pledge publicly that it's not going to happen again. Unfortunately, with this president I expect that to happen the day the sun rises in the west.
There's another very good reason why Barack Obama shouldn't be addressing America's youth.
This is the same man that saw nothing wrong with his children being exposed on a regular basis to an avowed ant-American racist and anti-Semite in the church Obama chose to be a member of for two decades, because it helped him politically.
He's hardly a judge of what impressionable children ought to be told.
My advice is to keep your kids home that day if they're so unfortunate as to still be in the public school system and your school administrator ignores your concerns and insists on showing this. And to carefully monitor any little 'assignments ' they may have gotten from Teacher.
If your children do end up having to sit through this, see it again at home with them, and be ready to point out any questionable material and give them proper information. Mind rape is never pretty, especially when it involves kids who haven't developed defenses against it yet.
UPDATE: Something else slipped out from under the woodwork. Take a look at the Obama bios the Department of Education is suggesting teacher assign their students as 'background'!! These people are not to be trusted.
12 comments:
i personally don't see anything wrong with this presidential speech.
i mean.
what's he gonna do?
like.
apologize to the kids?
This is a perfect opportunity to educate children. Doesn't matter whether you agree with Obama or not. The important lesson is to work with them on critical reasoning, teach them not to accept everything at face value.
Teach them to ask questions of the speaker and or material that they receive.
I agree. He hasn't been transparent with America. And as long as Van Jones is still part of his administration, etc...etc... Obama should be banned from the Presidency, not just the classroom.
I find the whole premise "creepy", personally.
FF, where did you find the phrase "serve President Obama?" I read through the article you linked to (and the two PDF documents) but didn't find anything. Was it there previously (and did it disappear down the memory hole?") Please advise when you can. And have a great labor day weekend!
BTW, my son is 3 and will not be watching this.
I don't neccessarily have a problem with the President speaking to America's children. I also think he is spot on when he says it is important to listen to leaders such as Congressmen, Mayors, Presidents and others, however, it does come accross as hypocritical. After all, Democrats never listened to Bush or respected much that he had to say nor did they try to work with him.
I don't neccessarily have a problem with the so called 24/7 campaign. His team would simply say he is trying to get his message out. Frankly I wish President Bush would have made a greater effort in this regard to get his points accross. He actually had some good ideas that were shot down because he could not bother to make an effort to defend them before the American people.
With all of this said there is something a little creepy about Obama's efforts. In dictatorships the leader plasters himself all over the place and is constantly active in the lives of the public that he rules. This is precisely what Obaam is doing. In other words, his behavior is consistent with the actions of a dictator and is not how the President of a Republic like America should behave.
"Serve President Obama", this is disturbing but unfortunately not surprising, given the actions to date of this President. Obviously this is wording is a Freudian slip or in this case a slip of the pen. Nevertheless, Freudian slips and slips of the pen serve to reveal what is in the person's heart at the time the words are uttered or written.
This is certainly a far cry from the words of President John F. Kennedy, "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country."
Between the constant exposure and these words it seems that Obama does not understand that he is the President of a Republic and not the despot of a dictatorship. You see in a Republic like America the President serves the people. The people do not serve the President. It is Mr. Obama who should be writing the letter to himself about how he can serve the American people and their children not the other way around.
If Mr. Obama keeps this up, he is going to get an education faster than he thinks about how things work in a Republic like America. I think his model is dicatorships. If so, the lesson will be most shocking to him.
well call me paranoid.
what day is this speech going to be broadcast?
wasn't it just 8 short years ago bush was reading to school kids when an aide whispered something in his ear.
8 years ago this week.
i wonder if a reichstag fire is on the horizon.
this speech supposedly is pre-recorded.
just sayn.
Howdy, Mrs. Right Wing,
The phrase you're looking fo risn't in the current scrubbed version. But it was in the original. As you know if you read th elinks, there's plenty of questionable stuff left in, and there are plenty of lefty teachers who will assign it.
Hello Jack .You're assuming parents will be with their kids when this is shown, and that the children's teachers will use this to teach them critical thinking.
Sorry,no.
Regards,
Rob
No, I am not assuming that all. I send my children to a private school because I am concerned about all aspects of their education.
Nonetheless, we monitor their exposure to ideas, thoughts, beliefs and ideologies.
We have regular conversations about all of this. Every day they are exposed to a million messages. Can't be their all the time, so I have to teach them how to determine what is real, what is good and what isn't.
Hi Jack,
I likewise send my kids to private school, which means that like you, I pay double..once for a dysfunctional school system I can't use and again to get my kids a decent education.
And the other factors you mention are exactly why my wife and I made the decision when our kids were quite small to get television out of the house and use the TV to show videos. It's one of the best things I ever did for them.
Now that they're older and have acquired some defenses, they can watch the tube over at a friend's or at Grandma's or listen to some political con man make a speech without being mindraped.
My point is that many of these kids aren't in the same position, especially with 'teacher' helping them along and assigning books like the ones I linked to in my update. This stinks of 'Dear Leaderism' .
BTW, I also have a problem with someone responsible for tripling the country's deficit and squandering its wealth going all Mr. Rogers with the children who are going to be stuck paying the bills for his neo-Marxist agenda.
And yes, chaver, I know how harsh that sounds.Sorry for the rant.
Regards,
Rob
Hi Rob,
No worries. I don't expect to have all of my friends/family agree with my politics.
There are one or two exceptions to that, but overall, doesn't bother me whether agreement occurs or not.
Dannis Prager's tagline is always that he prefers clarity to agreement.
I think it's one of the more intelligent things he's come up with..and actually, I don't think you and I are all that far apart on the important stuff.
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