Well, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?
Unfounded fears over President Obama’s speech to children prompted some parents to keep their children home from school Tuesday. It’s too bad. They missed an excellent speech.
Obama, speaking directly to the nation’s students — those who weren’t at home playing on their XBox or watching TV — told the nation’s children to buckle down, study hard and become good citizens.
“When you give up on yourself, you give up on your country,” he said, standing before a backdrop emblazoned with “My Education, My Future.”
“The future of America depends on you,” he said.
Hardly the makings of a socialist propaganda speech, as some apparently feared.
Obama challenged a generation of students to aspire to greatness by recalling previous generations that won wars and even revolutionized the way we communicate, with inventions such as Twitter and Facebook.
“What’s your contribution gonna be?” the president asked. “What discoveries will you make?”
It was the type of speech — a presidential pep talk if you will — that we would expect from Obama, who believes in the transformative power of education. It was a fitting address for the nation’s president to give to children in public schools.
However, as we noted last week, there was no need for the Department of Education to send out a lesson plan outlining how teachers can talk about the speech in their classes. That merely stoked the fires of controversy. Teachers, we assume, know how to prompt discussion among children. It’s what they do each day.
But overall we think a presidential address to students — minus any politicking — is an appropriate way for American’s children to get back to school.
We need to set high expectations for today’s school kids, and Obama began to set the bar Tuesday.
He ended with these words: “Don’t let us down.”
