Obama to school children: Ask what you can do for your president
With the passing of Ted Kennedy last week, it is easy to recall the memories of “Camelot” and the lore of the Kennedy family. Much of that has to do with the rhetoric flourishes of Ted’s brother, John F. Kennedy.
The words, “Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country,” although ingrained in the hearts and minds of most Americans, seem to have been misunderstood by Barack Obama to say, “Ask what you can do for your president.”
The Drudge Report splashed the story Tuesday afternoon that Obama planned to make an “unprecedented address to all public school students” on September 8.
And despite all of the proposed protests and outcry (even by Lefties) against the plan, which I sympathize with, there is a greater issue that already exists with the materials distributed for the event.
On the “Activities for grades PreK-6” document, the Department of Education has lined up some ideas on what teachers can do with their 4-14 year olds in the classroom. What is odd about the list is that all of the ideas revolve around Obama, not about the students or the country.
“Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama…” is the tip for what to do before Obama’s speech. Why is it so important to know about him? Is is really appropriate for schools to have students read all about Obama as a standalone project and not encourage and more in-depth civics lesson as part of the curriculum? Teachers should be careful with the suggested reading and make sure their 2nd grade class doesn’t get to read all about how Obama tried cocaine, as he admitted in “Dreams From My Father.”
Throughout the speech, teachers are asked to encourage students to think about many things… mostly relating to Obama himself:
“As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following: What is the President trying to tell me? What is the President asking me to do? What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?” (emphasis added).
“Students could discuss their responses to the following questions: What do you think the President wants us to do? Does the speech make you want to do anything? Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us? What would you like to tell the President? ” (emphasis added).
Why is it that the students ought to be accountable to Obama himself? This is yet another example of how out of touch Obama and his administration have become. They must honestly believe that citizens should be waiting to hear what Obama has to say and when he says “Jump” they should respond “How high?” To push this mindset on young children is appalling.
Finally, teachers are also encouraged to have the students work on some projects following the speech. One notable suggestion was to:
“Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.” (emphasis added).
Rather than doing for country, Obama now asks elementary school kids and younger to do for him instead.
The only thing missing from these suggestions were the deity-worthy capitalization of pronouns referring to Obama.
User Comments
Mike Wall
September, 2009
An interesting leap of logic. I guess trying to get the kids to relate more to the president as a person rather than some ivory-tower figure is now a bad thing.
Of course, by your logic, if the president represents the country, and students are asked to help the president, aren’t they therefore being asked to help the country?
Before you start picking nits, remember that the president was addressing KIDS, not cynical old guys like you and me.
Regards,
Mike