Prepared Remarks of President Barack ObamaBack to School Event

The White House ^ | September 7, 2009 | Various socialist hacks

[buccaneer81]

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009
 

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. 

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.   

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. 

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. 

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. 

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. 

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. 

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. 

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. 

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

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. 

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. 

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. 

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. 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. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. 

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. 

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. 

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. 

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. 

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. 

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.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. 

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. 

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. 

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." 

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. 

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. 

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. 

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. 

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?  

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

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

[B.O. Plenty]

ain't it interesting...

...zer0 knows this and IMHO, this was his goal here.

...indoctrinating people in Europe, Venezuela, Iran, the Norks...hell, just about anywhere else in this world is one thing, but indoctrinating Americans who live outside of 5 or 6 large inter cities is another.

It is getting clearer by the day that high minded oratory, persuasion, threats, sneakiness and guile are not working very well.

Therefore, zer0 and his merry band of gay blades may choose to descend into using force to get to where they want to be, and that is not going to work for them either.

[buccaneer81]

This is a government site, any reason for the excerpt?

It's long. Fox News has it up.

[Ben Chad]

ding ding ding ding
we have a winner

[hattend]

All Depends on me
As long as I live I shall think of only victory
I shall annihilate everyone who opposed me

who said it (it wasn’t Hillary)

[AlanGreenSpam]

Basically, Obeyme is saying “I am Jesus - I’m here to guide you.”

Our pathological narcissist so-called “President” is so self-centered. It’s all about him bringing his wisdom down from Mt. Sinai like Moses.

Note he mentioned “I” 37 times and “I’m” 7 times, and “I’ve” 5 times in that short speech. That’s FORTY-NINE MENTIONS OF “THE ONE”!!!

Here are some key points taken from he speech:

—”I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go.”

[No Obambi, they’re scared sheetless about the socialist economy that you’re forcing down our throats, meaning no jobs, no hope. They’re depressed that you have greedily spent their future on your Spendulus programs]

—”But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities.”

[Here’s where the Obeyme brainwashing part comes in: You OWE your country — e.g. other people — something!!] IMO, charity (or even personal excellence) should be voluntary, not a right of the collective.

—”You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. “

[WHY ARE YOU LYING to young students, Obambi??? You don’t want a fair & free country at all!! You want MORE got’t control and less freedom, less free markets, more socialist cronyism — which translates into less fairness.]

[CitizenM]

there is a whole lot in there about misery

The Democrat philosophy - make people think their lives are miserable, then they turn to you to help.

Beyond that...If Obama wanted to do a speech, fine. But a welcoming one...Welcome back to school, challenges ahead, opportunities, new beginnings, etc. Exciting and optimistic not this humdrum, woe is me, sad thing that he tries to turn around by telling them they can overcome. It is like getting run over by a tractor, then being expected to stand up and cheer thank you.

First this will be way over the heads of many students and inappropriate for the younger ones because of the talk about AIDS etc.

Secondly, in most schools kids will not pay attention anyway...they will be talking, laughing, passing notes, etc. Obama is such an egotist to think that kids will listen intently. Go to any school assembly and tell me who was listening, and who remembers what was said?

Third, and most importantly. If Obama wants to talk to our kids he should address real issues they need to hear about for their own self worth and respect. Such as: -

1. Pull your pants up and cover your underwear, and get pants that are your size and not sized for Bozo the clown.
2. Don't have multiple ear, face, body piercings and tatoos.
3. Wear normal hairstyles, not all shaved off, not purple and red dyed, not glued in spikes, and not in fuzzy dreadlocks.
4. Do not have a baby until you are working and can pay for it and can be an all-the-time parent! Do not expect the govt. to pay for your children anymore if they are born before you are married and you or your spouse are working.
5. Learn to speak ENGLISH...Not Spanish, Eubonics, Hip Hop, Jive. If you want a good job, you must be able to communicate in English!
6. Walk lifting both feet, not sliding and slouching across the road. Walking tall and proud is a sign of self-confidence.

7. Do not expect handouts. Handouts do not make you equal. Handouts make you less than equal because they make you dependent. Government, like me, wants you dependent so we can be in control. But do not take them, or you will never be free again.

[buccaneer81]

Uncle Adolph.

[AlanGreenSpam]

--"First this will be way over the heads of many students and inappropriate for the younger ones because of the talk about AIDS etc." Yah right-on! Imagine 5 year old asking teacher, "What Obeyme saying when he says "AIDS." Teacher: "Well, Johnnie, it's when 'Adam & Steve' have a thing for each other and get sick afterwards. Real sick."

[McLynnan]

I have never heard of Roma, Texas have you??

Surprise, surprise!!! Roma is on the Rio Grande.

[hattend]

You win.

Sounds like Nobama

[Typical_Whitey]

You know what would be great if there was a brave person in the WH that had foreknowledge of the first draft of this speech before the controversy and actually leaked it out....

LOL.....

[CondiArmy]

Just did a word count of Reagan’s speech to school children in 1988. He talks about himself only 1.8% in the speech. Compare that to Obama’s 20%. Obama blathers about himself more than 10 times as much as Reagan.

[carolinacrazy]

A watered down version of the original I am sure. A good speech expected from a United States President. But a sign of a President on the ropes evidenced by his use of “W” language at the end. “God Bless, and God Bless America”. It will be interesting to see if he actually says that.

[P-Marlowe]

Obama uses the term "I" about 40 times in this speech. It's not about the children, it's about OBAMA.

Obama is pathological when it comes to his egotism. Obama thinks the world revolves around him. He thinks that if he tells children to wash their hands, that they will wash their hands. If he tells them to read a book, they will read a book. If HE tells them to work hard, they will work hard.

He is quickly becoming overexposed. His speech to the children and his speech to congress is going to do nothing more but educate the public as to what a egomaniac he is.

[FReepapalooza]

It’s apparent by how many people on this thread are commenting that “it’s not so bad”, just how innocent and incidious this indoctrination comes across.

Be ever vigilant.

[Typical_Whitey]

Don’t forget about the H1N1 scare he is throwing in there. Probably the first draft had some hint for the kids to ask their parents if they had adequate health insurance to cover them in case they get the H1N1. Because Obama said he was going to make sure we all had Government Health coverage don’t ya know.

[no_go_lie]

Indeed. Last year young people from college students to primary school kids were brainwashed into telling their parents to vote for Obama. In one case, a young girl went into the voting booth with her father and helped him pull the lever. When they got out, he jokingly told her that maybe they voted for McCain instead. She threw a fit, went down on the floor crying, screaming that she wanted Obama to win.

[buccaneer81]

Obama uses the term "I" about 40 times in this speech.

55 to be exact.

[Happyinmygarden]

“It sounds like his 50% white trailer trash talking here.”

Ya kin take da boy otta da trailer but ya cane take da trailer otta da boy.

[Dubya-M-DeesWent2SyriaStupid!]

Dang they are spin machines.

Gibbs: Opponents of Obama starting 'Animal House food fight'

By Eric Zimmermann - 09/07/09 02:09 PM ET

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted the president's critics for questioning the propriety of Obama's speech to schoolchildren Tuesday.

"It's a sad state of affairs that many in this country politically would rather start an 'Animal House' food fight rather than inspire kids to stay in school, to work hard, to engage parents to stay involved and to ensure that the millions of teachers that are making great sacrifices continue to be the best in the world," Gibbs told reporters on Monday.