Obama's Address to Students -what's the REAL issue?

September 8, 2:58 PMSan Diego Public Education ExaminerHeather Siladi

Previous

6 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the San Diego Public Education Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance

With all the controversy over Obama's speech to students today, I think it's important to get some perspective.

It's really difficult to make a reasonable argument against allowing children to listen to their president tell them to work hard and stay in school, but the conservatives are trying to do just that.

So if a school district were to argue that any speech by a president is political and not appropriate for school, then certainly if a president were involved in a reelection campaign, and was holding a political rally, it would be that much more inappropriate to involve the school system... right?

Let's look at the case of the Lakota School system just north of Cincinnati. Lakota is one of the districts refusing to air President Obama's speech. Lakota is also a predominantly Republican area.

In September 2004, when then President George Bush was in the middle of a close re-election campaign, he visited that area for a campaign rally which was billed by the Republican Party to be the "biggest of the year."  They planned for an attendance of about 50,000 people.

How did the Lakota School System react to a partisan political rally?

The newspaper record shows:

•  They shut down the entire school system two hours early so people could attend.
• They canceled afternoon preschool and kindergarten.
• They packed the 500+ member marching band onto 19 school buses and sent them to entertain the crowd.
• They sent the school choir to sing the national anthem. 

Basically, they spent taxpayer money and used school children to support one presidential candidate during an election.

So why does one President get active participation in a campaign rally and another President is condemned for wanting to say "work hard and stay in school" to students? What kind of a message does this send to children? That we only respect our President if he's the one we voted for? Whether it's intended or not, could the message children are receiving be that we only respect the President if he's white?

For more info: Visit Heather Siladi's Public Education Examiner Page