When the state reaches past me to my children directly, intentionally shutting me out and diminishing my role as parent and motivator-in-chief, I cry foul.
And, yes, trust is an issue here. I do not trust Barack Obama precisely because of the people he associates with and seeks advice from – to wit, the Reverend James Wright and a bevy of “special advisors” to the president who have recent, radical ties to communism and anarchy (such as Van Jones, the green jobs advisor, Ezekiel Emmanuel, the health care advisor…I could go on and on.)
I also do not trust Obama to be able to differentiate between topics which are and are not political in nature – topics which are and are not off limits. The doctrine of environmentalism, for example, has been taught to every child in every school in America, but global warming is not settled science. I will not burden my children with guilt that the planet warms and cools and animals are born and die and icebergs melt as part of the natural order of things.
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I also do not trust Obama and his team not to add subliminal messages during his address, either visually or verbally.
Being president of the United States does not entitle anyone to automatic trust. Trust must be earned, and so far Barack Obama has not earned it.
Some will accuse me of being a racist because I oppose virtually every item on Obama’s agenda. When a liberal accuses a conservative of being a racist because he or she opposes Obama’s goals, it’s like chalking up every contrary remark by a female to her menstrual cycle. I know my own mind.
Obama is presumably an example of academic excellence (I say ‘presumably’ because he will not release grades or papers from any of the institutions he attended), but why can’t he speak on academic excellence to children AND their parents at home? His team would say he can’t do that because they cannot trust parents to sit down with their children and watch it – they must rely on government employees (teachers) to make sure children hear the speech. Just one more example of how liberals do not trust the American people.
Which is preferable in a Republic – distrust of the government or distrust of the people?
At the very least, if I cannot preview the speech via You Tube or whitehouse.com, my children will be excused from school during the speech.
I hope this is not intended to become an annual event.
P.S. I recall Michelle Obama, herself very well educated, telling an audience of women on the campaign trail that they should not aspire to become doctors and lawyers but that they should aspire to low level service sector jobs – what kind of academic message is that?
P.S.S. I've never written a blog faster. I guess the whole idea of a (potentially) political speech aimed at children touched a nerve.
3 comments:
Here is what the Department of Education is saying about it,including suggested teaching topics:
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
You can watch the address live on Whitehouse.gov @ 12 Eastern Standard Time.
Good Luck! Deciding what is best for our children is hard and I only have a one year old!
I hadn't heard this was going to happen. (Don't watch much news, bad me.) Now I'm leery. Is it mandatory for all public schools to watch it? I'll be doing some research. Thanks.
Five excerpts from an AP story about the address with my parenthetical comments:
Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq." (Piping the voice of the supreme leader into every classroom…reminds me of Soviet Russia.)
Arizona state schools superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, said lesson plans for teachers created by Obama's Education Department "call for a worshipful rather than critical approach." (Exactly!)
Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online, originally recommended having students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." (The POTUS is supposed to serve us – not the other way around.)
The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals." (If Obama and his admin. could be trusted to keep their remarks on this topic alone, then I would not have had a problem with the idea of the speech. They do not know where the boundaries are.)
Quincy, Ill., schools decided Thursday not to show the speech. Superintendent Lonny Lemon said phone calls "hit like a load of bricks" on Wednesday. (I included this excerpt because I have a lot of family in the Quincy area. Just thought it was interesting.)
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