President Obama's Speech to School Students

"Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything." B.F. Skinner

President Obama's speech to the nation's school students has been posted at the White House site.

I think the president's speech is a good one for high school students, but is not appropriate for elementary students.

Most of the 2.7 million government school teachers support President Obama so any classroom discussion about his speech will be slanted in favor of the president, and will have an affect on the 2012 election. (Update 9/26/2009. A teacher in New Jersey was teaching her 8 year old students to sing the praises of President Obama. Indoctrinating children is nothing new for churches and states.)

I also think the president is looking for votes in the 2012 election. Millions of current high school students will be eligible voters in 2012 and will remember the president's speech to "them". More young people who vote will vote for him than will vote for his challenger. The President's speech is a smart political move.

As always, those who control the origins of the message can control the masses. The president is controlling the message in order to get more followers. He reminds me of some of the Southern Baptists preachers I used to hear when I was a kid. Spellbinding orations to say the least. The followers always returned, Sunday after Sunday.

"I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve."

No Mr. President, it is not the responsibility of the government employees to set high standards for the rest of us.

"And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself."

That's very good advice Mr. President. Now if only your government policies backed up that rhetoric. Why don't you really hold people to being responsible for themselves instead of being responsible for someone else?

"And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future."

Now there you go again Mr. President. This is Country worship. The new god is the State. As when you stand in front of eight, that's right, eight U.S. flags, not one, but eight icons of the State to worship. You desire the worship of the State because you are its high priest.

You are telling young people to work hard for their country. What you mean, they should work hard and grow the economy so the government employees can continue to live well as they confiscate a share of the workers' productivity.

"My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had."

Mr. President. Give your dead father a break! Stop bashing him in public just to satisfy your own anger at him, while praising your mother to get the female votes.

Of the three children you reference who overcame hardships, two thirds were females. Still pandering to the female vote Mr. President?

"Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college."

And the usual request for God to bless America.

"Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Why stop with America Mr. President? Why not ask him to bless the whole world?

Charles Tolleson