"Whenever a parent calls and says, 'I'm keeping my child home,' it's always excused. We never question what a parent does."
-- Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Julie Janssen
In keeping with George W. Bush’s tradition of leaving every child behind,
President Barack Obama, in his effort to connect with children in a 15-minute televised education speech next week, will, in the opinion of certain superintendents, be armed with too much liberal propaganda for students to bear.
That’s why
One more time for those in the back row: Students will be excused from school because the president will be talking.
I remember being made to watch the O.J. verdict in my ninth grade art class. What’s happening here?
The real lesson here for
Ah, history books. Talk about propaganda. Find me one school textbook that devotes more than a paragraph to civil rights, the Vietnam War, or Oliver North.
As for compassionate conservatism,
Ralph Nader remembers his father’s nightly question at the dinner table: “What did you learn in school today? Did you learn how to believe, or did you learn how to think?”
Maybe most parents will decide to send off their children to school Tuesday. Maybe they’ll even decide to gather at the dinner table as a family, and discuss what President Obama had to say.
While people angrily accuse him of spreading socialism and/or fascism, those same critics only encourage anti-patriotism; they spitefully plan to shelter their children from their president, and from what might well be an important lesson.
Whatever happened to staying in school?
Comments
This whole situation is full of irony... Parents are worried about their kids being brain-washed with socialism in a 15 minute video about staying in school... So, they're keeping kids home from school. Also, they must forget their kids are part of a socialist form of government everyday... The public school system. That is, when they're not keeping them home from school. These are the same people who whine about patriotism and how the country has gone to hell, but they don't want their children to see a message from the President of the United States.
To top it all off, they're complaining about the president because a man on a tv/radio show told them to do it! Who's being brainwashed here?
Sit back and think about it. It's all so very ironic, don't you think?
P.S. - I wasn't allowed to see the OJ verdict. The orchestra director didn't see the importance of it.
Well written/researched. Situation is very sad. Every child in America is required to take 10th & 11th grade U.S. History, yet some schools and parents are going out of their way to deny them opportunities to witness it.
President Obama's message to students is supposed to be his version of "school is cool." That's the same kind of message I used to hear Fonzie say on episodes of Happy Days when I was a kid, but apparently that is too much for some parents to handle; it's nearly impossible to educate a closed mind.
Perhaps the real reason why Glenn Beck and other conservative broadcasters are so eager to have their followers to stay home that day is so that they can stay at home and listen to their "leaders" promote their latest books or television shows. Anyone who calls themselves someone's "dittohead," as Rush Limbaugh's followers do, has already beeen indoctrinated.
Freedom of thought is not sbout refusing to hear someone's ideas, it is the abilty to decide whether you will accept them or reject those ideas after you hear them.
The majority of schools in the Central Florida area have opted not to show the speech for reasons you have not mentioned. They do not have the time to slip it into the daily schedule. Also, coordinating all the students to watch this when some are in lunch, or in class, or having PE, is an arduous task. If the speech were at night (when it should be) then we would not be blowing this out of proportion.
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