President Obama's speech to the school children of America yesterday and all of the controversy leading up to it remain on my mind this morning.
I'm remembering President Kennedy's speech during which he laid out the commitment to land men on the moon before the end of the 1960s. I recall the impact that declaration had on schools and on little boys like me. We all became interested in astronomy and the planets and science.
And, I remember watching public events like the inauguration and other major addresses on classroom televisions.
I'm also thinking of the children in my neighborhood who heard the President speak yesterday. I know many found inspiration in his words. My school aged grandchildren were ill yesterday and stayed home from school, but they watched the speech with their mother, she saw to that!
I'm wondering what the kids thought and felt when they heard the negative speech and news reports about their President and his desire to speak to them? I wonder what the children of color thought as they watched him and then considered all of the blow back against him?
We spend our days doing everything we can to encourage these children. Frankly, it upsets me when others behave in a manner that cuts into the impact of anything that might encourage them.
I'll let it go now. But, nothing is more important than the future of the children. The President seems to understand that. At least, that's what I heard from what he said yesterday.
4 comments:
He did deliver a great speech, that every student should have heard. When I read your post you reminded me of the stuff I remember watching on TV at school when I was a kid. I hate to say it, but my greatest memory was watching the World Series. I especially remember watching the 1968 Series between St. Louis and Detroit. Those were the days. I still can't believe that we got to watch that. They even made the girls watch it.
The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. "The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props," the Post reported.
With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. "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 House Majority Leader. "And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'"
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."
Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. "The speech itself and the use of the department's funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal," the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. "The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda."
That didn't stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it "cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters."
Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.
I really liked the speech (unfortunately, our school district didn't show it).
But I've been laughing at the hypocrisy of the Democrats all week. Can you imagine the uproar and self-righteous hand wringing from the left (and especially the corrupt N.E.A.) if President George W. Bush had done the same thing just a few years ago?
rc, wasn't that the best? I'm a bit older, but I remember watching the series as well. Especially thrilling was the 1960 series when the Pirates won.
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