If you oppose broadcasting President Barack Obama’s “stay-in-school” speech to students, would you oppose it if it were President George W. Bush or another Republican president?
And if you support broadcasting President Obama’s speech in the classroom next Tuesday, would you still support it if it were President Bush or another Republican president?
If you change your position based on the political affiliation of the president, then you see this mostly as a partisan political issue.
Should the President of the United States have the authority to insist or order schools to broadcast his speech?
Absolutely not. This is a Democracy, and the president should never be given that much control over public schools.
But this is not the first time a president has delivered a speech just for students.
President Ronald Reagan took the opportunity to politicize his message. Clips of Reagan’s 1988 speech show Reagan telling students that taxes were “such a penalty on people that there’s no incentive to prosper ...”
In 1991, President George H.W. Bush, in a nationally televised speech from a Washington, D.C. school, urged students to study and work hard in school and to say “no” to drugs.
So the precedent has been set, not once, but twice, and both times by Republicans.
The parents who called the school districts to complain or threaten to pull their children from school are within their rights to do so.
But they are missing a great opportunity to teach their children to think for themselves.
Why run away from the possibility of hearing an opposing point of view?
Would it not be better for the school administrators and teachers (and parents) to tell their students that they can view it, but they have an equally important responsibility to decide whether they agree or disagree with the message?
Why would school administrators, teachers and parents not use this opportunity to say it is important for an United States citizen (and students are citizens) to respect the office of the presidency, but that each citizen has a right to agree or disagree with the person who holds the office?
Why would educators and parents not use this opportunity to explain that whoever holds the position of president serves at the pleasure of its citizens?
Why would they not see this as an opportunity to explain that the president works for us, the citizens?
Why would teachers and parents not want to use this opportunity to explain that our form of government works with a rule-by-majority, rights-to-the-minority philosophy and that this “loyal opposition” concept is fundamental to preserving a well-functioning republic.
It means you can disagree with the president or the majority rule of Congress and be no less of a patriot or good citizen.
Why would teachers and parents not use this opportunity to say: “Listen to those who might believe differently than you, especially if it’s the president of the United States?
Why not explain that by listening to those with whom you disagree, you might understand your own position better?
Why not explain that refusing to listen to other points of view leads to uninformed bias and ignorance?
Why do the schools seem so reluctant to teach students how to think rather than what to think?
After listening to President Obama’s speech Tuesday, would it not be appropriate for teachers and the students to discuss what parts of the speech were partisan, if any, and what made those comments different than other segments of the speech? Why not compare it to President Reagan’s speech in 1988? To Bush’s speech in 1991?
Local school spokespersons said the superintendents and some other administrators determined that the president’s speech did not fit the curriculum goals of the school districts.
How could teaching a student to be a responsible citizen who can distinguish political rhetoric be outside the educational goals of any public school district?
Let’s teach our children to listen to all views. After all, if you don’t listen to those with whom you disagree, then they have no obligation to listen to you.
Do we really want our students, our children, to say: “When I was in school, they taught us that if we thought we might disagree with someone, even if it’s the president of the United States, we should just ignore them.”
Does that really fit the “curriculum goals” of our public schools?
