My random thoughts..

I was looking up the author of a good parenting book I’m currently reading when I came across his blog.  I thought this was a well written response to those who opposed President Obama’s back-to-school speech.  I am sharing the blog entry in its entirety here.  More good parenting blog articles from the author can be found on http://www.uncommon-parenting.com/category/blog/

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To Listen or Not to Listen to the President

That is the Question.

There has been a lot of flack recently about President Obama’s plan to address the nation’s school children on Tuesday. Many people oppose the idea. Others see no problem with it and even welcome it. But is this really a good idea?

Let’s start with the basics. The President wants to make a national address to the students of America. He will tell them to persist by staying and succeeding in school. He will challenge them to work hard. He wants them to set educational goals. He expects them to take responsibility for their learning. The speech will take from 15 to 20 minutes.

Criticism of this idea has come fast and furious during the past few days. Honest concern with the President addressing students has been ridiculed in recent days as frivolous and politically motivated. Interesting. But couldn’t it be that there are real and important reasons to boycott this speech? Maybe so. Let’s take a closer look.

1. President Obama wants to tell our children to stay in school and study hard. Just who does he think he is . . . . . the Pres . . . . .  oops. Well, you know what we mean. The next thing you know any-old-body will be wanting to tell our children to stay in school and study hard. We can’t have that.
2. How do we know he won’t use the last five minutes of his speech to indoctrinate our children with socialistic ideas like universal health care? If we would have had time in the last ten years, we would have spent the decade helping our children learn and live our family values. But something came up and we didn’t have time to do that. He might be able to undo all that we didn’t do during that time. We can’t have that.
3. We agree with Todd Gray, Superintendent of Waukeshaw Schools in WI. His plan is full speed ahead with the current curriculum, “It’s not that we don’t want people to see the President live,” he said, “but we’ve got a full day of curriculum.” Let’s do the math. One hundred eighty days of school at six hours a day. That is 1,080 hours or 64,800 minutes of instructional time during the year. Twenty minutes to hear the President would amount to 1/3200th of the school year. That’s a lot of time to waste on inspiring children to stay in school. We can’t have that.
4. Now we hear President Obama plans on having the teachers use a suggested lesson plan following his speech. Are you aware that lesson plan includes asking our children questions? “What resonated with you from the President Obama’s speech?” and “What is President Obama inspiring you to do?” are two of the suggested questions. Those sound to us suspiciously like questions that require higher level thinking skills. You got it! He is asking our children to think. We can’t have that.
5. The President is speaking to our children without our permission. We give our permission on everything else the teachers do during the day. Remember, we even got to sign a paper on that sex education thing they tried to do a couple of years ago? And we ask our kids every once-in-a-while, “What did you learn in school today?” They’re not sneaking anything by us. We can’t have that?
6. We heard some well-meaning educator suggest that we even watch the speech ourselves and debrief it with our children later that night. Hey, we work hard during the day. When we get home we like to relax. Besides, Desperate Housewives is on TV and we already missed one episode. We can’t have that.
7. You can’t fool us. The President is planning on promoting his political agenda to impressionable young minds. It is brainwashing. He is overstepping his bounds. It is our job to protect our children from radical ideas. We stopped getting the newspaper for that very reason. Brainwashing by others in not good. We can’t have that.
8. Now we have just learned that the President will be asking children to make two-minute videos describing the steps they will take to improve their education. He actually wants them to do something with what they have learned. Doing something with the learning will actually reinforce it, won’t it? We can’t have that.
9. In 1991, President Bush addressed students from an American history classroom in Deal Junior High in Washington, DC. Remember the uproar that created at the time? We don’t actually recall all the details of the negative effects that had on the children of America, but it must have been substantial. We can’t have that.
10. Just in case you are not convinced to opt your child out of listening to President Obama on Tuesday, we have saved the best reason for last. He is going to tell students to take responsibility for their own learning and education. Now, that is a radical idea. If we and our children believed that the responsibility for learning was on their shoulders, we wouldn’t be able to blame the teachers!

And think about this . . . . . once the responsibility for learning is transferred from the teachers to the students, how long will it be before some of the responsibility is placed on the parents shoulders? We can’t have that.

Chick Moorman and Thomas Haller