Obama's dangerous talk

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Obama’s dangerous talk				September 22, 2010

You know that our priorities are incomprehensibly skewed when you read that one in seven people in this country is living below the poverty line. Or that some parents refused to allow their children to listen to a speech by the President of the United States in which he extolled the value of education. And if you think the devaluation of education has nothing to do with poverty, think again.

Last week President Obama delivered his second back-to-school speech. And last week, because of parental negativity regarding what some thought would be political grandstanding and indoctrination, school systems were once again falling all over themselves to accommodate both the president’s remarks and parental backlash.

Some schools were so fearful of parental reprisals that they refused to air the speech. Or they told teachers they could air the speech, but only after sending home with each student in their classes a parental consent form and providing alternate activities for those who opted out. Quite the deal for a teacher who is slogging to get through the first week of school.

Other systems, like the WJC public schools, resorted to Rube Goldbergian techniques and dreamed up convoluted plans to air or not to air the speech.

Whereas last year the WJC schools allowed students to listen to the president’s speech in middle school and high school auditoriums, this year they stipulated that the speech would be presented only in middle and high school social studies classes, and that at the discretion of the social studies teacher. In the elementary schools, the speech could be heard in the classrooms, with the stipulation that parents could opt out for their children if they so desired.

Having read the president’s speech carefully, I can tell you that it was brilliantly conceived and a resounding rhetorical success. Demosthenes or Cicero would have been proud to have written it. Furthermore, it was totally devoid of political posturing and was doctrinaire only in the sense that it made a blistering case for staying in school and making the most of one’s educational career.

At the heart of the speech was a call for excellence in state, local and federal education programs and an insistence on outstanding principals and teachers, as well as on intense parental involvement. But more important was Obama’s demand that students must be responsible for their own success.

They must show up for class on time, pay attention in class, do their homework, study for exams and stay out of trouble. What parent could possibly disagree with that?

Or the notion that students can excel in any subject if they work diligently?

Or that the role of education is to allow all students to fulfill their promise, to be the best version of themselves they can be and “to treat others the way we want to be treated – with kindness and respect.” And doesn’t that sound Christianly familiar?

Finally, said Obama, “What I want you all to take away from my speech is that life is precious, and part of its beauty lies in its diversity. We shouldn’t be embarrassed by the things that make us different. We should be proud of them.” Bullies need not apply.

In short, the president’s speech was an encomium to education and child development that every student, parent, principal and teacher should have heard and embraced vigorously.

Why any parent would be opposed to such remarks is beyond me. I can assume only that the political atmosphere in this country has become so destructively divisive and so polluted with rancid ideology that all respect for the office of the president has been lost. Even worse is the fact that, despite the need for constant vigilance in areas such as education, any attempt on the part of the president to solicit excellence in the training of our young people is dismissed as pure indoctrination.

And we wonder why the poverty rate is so high?