It was all about the cult, and I do mean cult, of personality.
Well it was recently shown to indoctrinate schoolchildren in a public school.
The PTA President and school principle made this decision on their own and parents found out about after their children had already watched it.
On September 8th the President will be addressing America's schoolchildren- at school through a teleconferenced infomercial of his own devising. We don't know what he's going to say, but I'm fairly certain it will be mild, the content unobjectionable, and it will mainly be an encouragement to study and do well in school.
We don't know what he's going to say, but that's not really the problem with this. The problem isn't his content (yet), it's:
5. the precedent he's setting (and the education secretary acknowledges this is a precedent setting event)
4. the way he went about setting this up
3. the propaganda value (his numbers are slipping badly, so now he wants to talk to our children- that looks to me like a way to bolster the personality cult he has developed around him)
2. How this will be used in the classroom- does anybody think teachers like this one, for instance, or the PTA who made this decision, are really going to maintain a neutral zone in the classroom, or are they more likely to use it as another platform for indoctrination?
And while we don't know what he is going to say, or exactly what the teachers in the class will say, we can make some informed guesses based on this helpful bit of propaganda masquerading as a 'study guide' which our own U.S. Department of Education has put out for teachers. And that study guide is problem 1, and our tax dollars paid for it:
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America September 8, 2009
PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities: President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009
Before the Speech:
• Teachers can build background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama and motivate students by asking the following questions:
Who is the President of the United States?
What do you think it takes to be President?
To whom do you think the President is going to be speaking?
Why do you think he wants to speak to you?
What do you think he will say to you?
• Teachers can ask students to imagine being the President delivering a speech to all of the students in the United States. What would you tell students? What can students do to help in our schools? Teachers can chart ideas about what they would say.
• 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?
During the Speech:
• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. 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?
• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?
• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.
After the Speech:
• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• 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?
These aren't loaded questions, are they?
I particularly liked this one:
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.
To help the President. Not their school, their classmates, their parents, or even their country- but to make it personal and commit their young selves to slurping down the kool-ade in this personality cult and helping the President. Can you say narcissist?
Turns out it got a lot of unfavorable attention so it was quietly dropped down the memory hole. Now it's been changed to writing letters about their educational goals. But that first version is very telling.
So is this:
the DOE sent letters directly to the Principals of every public school in the country - Completely bypassing the locally elected Boards of Education and the Superintendents.
Judy Aron at Consent of the Governed writes:
For the record though, this is what Arne Duncan's Department of Education's website says about what the President will be saying:"The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens. "So, what exactly is Obama's version of "shared responsiblity" anyway? Are we merely educating children in our nation's schools to be a good citizens and compete in a global economy for a good job? Are we focusing on them just being good servants of the State and their community? What about family? What about their home and siblings? What about the Parent's role in bringing up and nurturing their children? What about parental responsibility and authority? It's a good bet Obama will not be talking about any of that.
It may well be a generic 'study hard, work hard, and do well in school' message. In fact, the more people squawk, the more likely that's all it will be as his speech gets watered down and the study guide gets rewritten.
And much as I dislike the President's policies and his dishonesty about them, I do totally get the historical significance of having the first Black President address school children on the first day of school (though it isn't the first day of school for everybody). There is a cool factor there that I can't dismiss and am even sympathetic to.
But here's the thing. It's common for Presidents to visit a classroom from time to time and read a book to schoolchildren. But this is something new- scheduling a nationwide address to all schoolchildren, and expecting schools to interrupt the school day to do so, so the President can have the unprecedented opportunity to address those minor children without their parents there with them- AND releasing a taxpayer funded 'study guide' in order to frame the way the children perceive and receive that message. It's also troublesome that the DOE bypassed the local school boards and the parents and timed their message to coincide with the first day of school so there would be less time for people to hear about it and object.
If this is okay with you- would it have been perfectly acceptable had Bush done the same thing? Would it be okay for a Nixon or a Reagan?
Politifact says it's not quite so precedent setting as Obama's secretary of education claims:
We did learn, however, that President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation's students in a televised speech during school hours in 1991. ''I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid,'' Bush said, according to news reports from the time. He told students to ''block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart'' and ''work harder, learn more.''
Democrats at the time criticized the speech. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives.
I think I will work on a study guide of my own.
P.S. Reminder: When Bush delivered a speech to schools (and I am not aware that he had the education department prepare a study guide where children were told to write a letter to themselves about what they could do to help the president, and teachers were to collect those letters and hold the students accountable), the Democrats were so incensed they held hearings about it:
Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. "The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC," Ford began. "As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event."Pin It
Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly.
