Posted on 09/03/2009 7:18:43 AM PDT by Night Hides Not
A groundswell of parent opposition to President Barack Obama's speech next week to students on the importance of education has forced many North Texas school districts to question whether to air it live in classrooms.
Obama announced the speech weeks ago, but opposition and concerns spread rapidly Wednesday morning through conservative social networking Web sites and radio talk shows.
By midday, local school districts say, they were inundated with hundreds of phone calls from parents urging them to not show Obama's speech at school.
Some parents threatened to keep their children home from school if the video was aired.
"We had no idea that there would be a public outcry," said Laura Jobe, a Mesquite ISD spokeswoman. "It caught us by surprise."
Cody Cunningham of the McKinney ISD said: "We rarely hear of parents pulling children out of history or government classes where they're studying the politics or historical significance of a previous president."
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
For so many reasons, this “speech” to the kiddies is so wrong. Where do I start?
1. This is just 0bama getting more face time to feed his narcissistic ego.
2. If he wants to stress the importance of education, he should talk to the parents, not to first graders.
3. If he really thinks education important, he should BUTT OUT of the school day and let the kids learn.
Has anyone actually downloaded and read the curriculum that goes with the speech?
There is no mention of any health care policy, economic policy,environmental policy, foreign policy, national security policy, defense policy, budget priorities, or even education policy.
Is the President talking to citizens about stuff that turns out to be quite innocuous really a fight worth fighting?
Why have you not read the curriculum?
You could have it on your desktop and read it all in the next 5 minutes.
Then you can make an informed statement on pulling your kid out. Frankly I think most teachers will be thrilled if half the class stays home. :)
Its not the speech that will indoctrinate the little people, its the teaching material afterwards.
HA!!! Just got a call from a friend/teacher @ our elementary school. She said that they have had MANY phone calls opposing this! Good stuff!
Any president that would hijack the already illegal National Endowment of the Arts for his propaganda purposes is not above hijacking the public school system for the same. The pattern has been established, and we must assume that he will hold true to it.
The EGO of Obama is what is so disturbing to me. Does he really believe that a live (or taped) message from him piped into a classroom is going to matter to school children? Elementary children don’t care about anything beyond what’s for lunch/snack/etc and when they can go out to play. Middle schoolers will only appreciate that they’re not having to do something else. High schoolers will be annoyed that they will still have to do their required work, but they’ll have to do it on their own time.
And then there’s the perception that the POTUS can see right into each classroom across the country via computers and the internet. Is that the message here? Big Brother can see everything. Do as Big Brother says or ELSE!
Here's my post from about 10 minutes ago. So far, there's 7 "thumbs-up", and 5 "thumbs-down":
If I could trust our President and his minions to confine his speech to the importance of education, I would support him 100%.
Unfortunately, through his actions as President, he has shown himself to be untrustworthy, and just another politician.
Accordingly, I do not trust him to confine his message to a simple one of promoting education.
I grew up in the 60s, 15 miles from Berkeley, CA. I developed a healthy skepticism of an over-reaching federal government which remains to this day.
For that, I am now called a racist and a right-wing domestic terrorist. This means I've come full circle. When I was awarded an Army ROTC scholarship in 1972, I was labeled as a "sell-out" and a "babykiller".
I'm sure Van Jones thinks of me as an ***hole, too!
We should all be aware that the Federal Government went directly to school principals and not through the school boards. We should all be very frightened.
Public Childhood Education + Adulation for Political Figure = Slippery Slope
I'm blessed to have lived here for over 12 years.
I've told my three children that I have done at least two wonderful and important things for them:
1. I made sure they were born in Texas.
2. I taught them how to swim.
Some of the talking points include- sorry, don’t have a direct link!- What can you do to help the president? Why is it important to listen to what the president and other politicians say?
Most of the talking points are harmless, but a few are down right scary! Not only that, but this is all part of him creating an image for himself- much like that of Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro. Picture in your mind the giant images of Hussein on Iraq buildings. That is what this is leading to. If you get the youth on your side, you get the country.
What is the latest line on Bam just canceling this whole thing? He is risking a massive school sick-out on the 8th. which will certainly not help his diving poll numbers.
A great video with quotes from the information given to teachers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO_OO36sRVg&feature=related
This is very scary!
Please watch this. This is the best explanation of the purpose and effect of the Hitler Youth. THIS IS WHAT OBAMA IS STARTING ON SEPT. 8TH.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spX1zHMOpGw
Forcing the mandatory Dear Leader speech down the throats of captive children is the sort of thing one expects from narcissistic, megalomaniacal dictators.
I have no doubt that this speech will be nothing but "Stay in school. Study hard!" fluff. But that's not what this is all about.
It's about the newest global Marxist boob establishing an end-around channel to the youth of today, deliberately removing the parent from the traditional role of media gatekeeper.
They are our children. Not his.
I live in South Texas, and my wife teaches in an elementary school. I asked her if her school was going to participate in the "indoctrination", and she said the whole school district has decided not to participate!
God Bless Texas!
This is not about "stuff that turns out to be quite innocuous".
This is about advancing a Cult of Personality with America's schoolchildren.
He is counting on the brain-dead liberal teachers to do his dirty work for him.
How true...so very true.
I live in a county that is considered Republican, a school district that has received a State excellent rating for the past 10 years...yet one still has to negate the liberalism that oozes from the new school board, to effectively obviate and render unnecessary any NEA pilot programs.
In this school district, the parents are involved, are watching/addressing the school's curriculum. It's sad that so many other parents, so many other school districts cannot state the same.
All my kids graduated from McKinney HS. We have since moved away but when we were visiting last October we were SHOCKED to see the number of OBAMA for PRESIDENT signs. sigh....
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