The overheated right-wing pundits were on to something after all. Obama’s speech to the “nation’s students” was pompous, ridiculously long, chock-full of ed-school bromides, and wholly beyond a president’s proper role.
Why should students study, according to Obama? Because they will develop “critical thinking skills” from “history and social studies” that will allow them “to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.”
How about studying because you will gain actual knowledge–not just “critical thinking skills”–that will lift you out of ignorance? How about for the love of learning and beauty? How about because facts matter?
If the “critical thinking skills” that Obama thinks will “fight poverty and homelessness” led to an awareness that out-of-wedlock child-bearing is the greatest cause of long-term poverty in this country, I might reconsider my contempt for the critical thinking cult and for the ed-school mantra that education is about learning how to learn, rather than about hard-won knowledge.
But I doubt that that’s what Obama had in mind. I also doubt that he expects that “critical thinking skills” will reveal that homelessness is overwhelmingly a function of substance abuse and mental illness, or that it is often a lifestyle choice by people who want to live outside the rules of normal society.
When Obama wants students to use their “critical thinking skills” to make the nation “more fair and more free,” he probably didn’t mean getting rid of racial preferences, either.
It’s Obama’s prerogative, of course, to summon up the usual litany of liberal social causes as the be-all and end-all of existence and education—science and math are desirable for “curing diseases like cancer and AIDS, and developing new energy technologies and protecting our environment,” he said. No one would object to curing cancer or developing clean energy; these are noble pursuits. And he gives at least passing acknowledgement that business exists and that working in the for-profit sector can actually have social benefit beyond providing an occasion for taxation: “You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.”
Still, I have to admit that the knee-jerk opposition to the speech, which had struck me until now as another depressing sign of how paranoid and overheated the opposition to Obama had become, was more right than wrong. No, Obama is not trying to enlist troops for the socialist takeover of the economy; his speech is no more radical than the thousands of commencement speeches that froth out from college greens every year. And obviously the call for hard work and personal responsibility is welcome; had the speech been directed explicitly at black students, I wonder if the conservatives would have blown their tops.
Pre-speech, I had decided that it was more insane to object to the President addressing school children, than for the President to address them in the first place. (Though I had fully in mind Gene Healy’s brilliant analysis of the late arrival of children in the presidential public vocabulary, and the legitimate critique that presidents really have more pressing obligations within the constitutional framework than worrying about children). Why shouldn’t the President be a momentary and non-partisan presence in the classroom, making visible a part of our government, I thought.
But reading the speech, I have changed my mind. The impression it gives is of an enormous ego and sense of boundless power and portfolio. Even if Obama had not announced: “I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn,” the speech still makes you ask: Who, exactly, are you to be saying these things to children? Isn’t it the role of teachers and parents to encourage hard work and a love of learning? Is the president also the Great Roofer and Parent and School Purchasing Department in the Sky?
I’m not ready to buy into the entire right-wing critique of Obama as a dangerous threat to liberty or as the very embodiment of “The Left.” But this speech does suggest a disturbing lack of perspective.
What we heard was the sanitized, politically correct version after conservatives pointed out that the President wanted to use and brainwash the innocent, gullible, and politically unaware schoolchildren to “help” the President implement his partisan programs. Don’t give him credit for changing his plans once the political storm began. Any dummy would have done that.
Critical thinking skills are needed. It was the lack of critical thinking skills that led so many to vote for Obama, like pod people who had been visited by the body snatchers while they slept, and dutifully marched mindlessly to the polls.
“something you are good at”
Uh, sorry to break it to ya, but Barack Obama was NOT even good at this as he quit that nearly 15 years ago despite the fantasy spouted by his MSM.
You’re nit picking a pretty decent speech. I thought it was a great speech based on the audience. I’m just relieved he didn’t throw in unnecessary political bullet points. Plus, look at most of the audience of that speech.. he had to talk on a lesser level so they would understand. If you have kids, don’t waste your time here nitpicking Obama’s speech, instead go and reinforce healthy growth and intelligence in your child.
He is a Marxist. Van Jones and the rest of the cast of characters is proof. That, and the fact that he won’t reveal is own educational history is reason enough for me as parent to want to keep him the hell away from my kids. Besides, I already made that speech to them before the term started. If other parents need the government to do that for them too, let them watch it outside the classroom.
@John Ray
John,
Lets take one fact here. You say that most young people want us to focus on green energy which I really have no problem with but let’s face facts. Young people have no real experience on how to accomplish that and on the other side most of that most tax revenue is generated by people over 30 so I ask do you really think it’s a good idea to open the tax piggy bank to a bunch of 20 year olds who have no life experience?
They may accomplish something but they will spend us into slavery if we let them. Free enterprise and free markets would do wonders for green job and green energy. We don’t need the government or our tax dollars wasted on this. You also have to balance other things like jobs and unemployment. You can’t create 10,000 green jobs that will put 1,000,000 people out of work. All you will accomplish is a country with record unemployment with no end in sight. One of the contributing factors to home forclosures today is the high unemployment. You think unemployent and the housing crisis is bad now wait until unemployment is 20% which is very possible with the out of control spending, “cap and trade” and obamacare. You can’t keep spending money you don’t have. If I can’t buy a new car because I haven’t saved enough shouldn’t OUR government do the same.
Brian
the speach to the children was done to boost his image with parents. This was done to make people like him and bring back his messiah image. It was an inpromptu speach. It was as if he woke up one morning and said , “let’s go to the public schools,(occult institutions for Obama) and the teachers will convince the students that I truly am the messiah and everyone will love my healthcare plan” I think the teleprompter let him down. OOps! I used a little h for the word him.
As I have been saying for two years now. This is the most inadequate, unaccomplished, lightweight president in the history of our great(Obama say’s, “not so great”) country. John McCain was more accomplished after he finished flight school at 23 yrs old than Obama will ever be. sorry, I am speaking the truth. I do nmot hate the man , but his socialist agenda will destroy our country. Let’s remove the spell and bring our country back to greatness.
Heather, you have a long way to go but it’s nice to see you have started the trip. Seven months into this repulsive administration, two years of campaigning and, bless you, you are starting, just starting, to see what Obama, his staff, and the Democrats, are about.
And you thought the opposition was insane?
Good luck Heather
Another point here, imho, send your kids to private or christian schools. This will help to clean up the politically correct democrat institutions, otherwise known as our public schools. parents do not want to admit that the public schools today are social institutions designed to make your kids think a certain way. As long as that way is politically correct. your kids are being fed the lie of global warming. scientifically, this is a hoax. The liberal crowd is in it so deep, they can’t pull out. have you noticed they are starting to call it, “climate change” instead of global warming. This way , no matter what happens, they are covered. Are you kidding me. You send your kids off every day to hear these lies!!!
Critical Thinking Skills = To consider in a thoughtful way, exactly what kind of BS you can pull on the person you are talking to, so as that person will consider you smart and wise. A solution to a way around the problem, not a solution to the problem.
The President has become an intrusion, rather than a statesman or leader.
>achieved something via education.
If you think Barack Obama got where he is because of getting an education, you don’t know Chicago politics…
>Obama’s sharing of his personal family dysfunction
Like all good “liberals,” he lives in the depths of emotional neediness. They meddle in our lives because of an obsession with somehow filling that emotional void.
Heather MacDonald did some “critical thinking” herself and came away with the right criticism. Facts matter. Substance matters. Obama’s speech certainly could have used the “MacDonald touch”.
I’m just glad my daughters started school the day AFTER Chairman Hussein’s speech so they didn’t have to listen to it. A lying, affirmative-action coddled, loony-left, elitist nincompoop like Obama is the LAST person my children need advice from.
But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president’s school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president’s political benefit. “The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props,” the Post reported.
With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students,” said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. “And the president should be doing more about education than saying, ‘Lights, camera, action.'”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/When-Bush-spoke-to-students-Democrats-investigated-held-hearings-57694347.html
I keep hearing the same words from opposite lips every time a shoe is found fitting on the other foot. Can I be helped. Reeducated maybe?
I always liked camping.
Hello muddah, hello faddah
Here I am at…Camp Piñata.
Just taking a humorous whack at it.
As a recovering college professor, I can tell you that Colonel Neville and JasonS are dead-on accurate in their comments about what constitutes “critical thinking skills.” A “critical thinker” is someone who believes that the only valid interpretation of anything is the Marxist one.
I responded to Obama’s speech at my blog:
Response to Obama’s school speech
It was a great speech, now the wingnuts are floating their version of what they feared the speech would be. Always good for a laugh.
Even though I did not vote for Obama and don’t really agree with him on anything, I thought the speech writers did a good job at trying to address the children. In regards to the comment about “Isn’t it the role of teachers and parents to encourage hard work and a love of learning”. The answer to that question is YES!. But the problem is that parents and teachers AREN’T doing that and maybe the children need to hear that they need to want a better education for themselves. The problem in public schools is that parents don’t care and they basically send their kids to school as a babysitter and expect the teachers to raise their children for them because the parent is too busy working or trying to take care of a single parent household. Many teachers nowadays are tired of this mentality by parents and so the teachers are taking an approach of basically just getting through the day and they don’t really care about their teaching jobs anymore. They are sick of the unruly, disrespectful and mouthy kids that they try to teach and trying to get the parents to step in an intervene is useless. That’s why many public schools are disasters. Teachers just want the benefits and the pensions and they can’t wait till they get enough years to retire. How many young people today really want to be teachers to better the community. Not many where I live. If the teachers are failing and the parents are failing, why not let the kids hear a speech from our Presidnet whom they might actually listen to.
From an outsider (Canadian): One of the most alarming things I see when observing American politics over the last decade-plus is how every partisan demonizes the opposite party’s leader– especially when they are in power. Has it always been this over-the-top? I became aware of it first with Clinton, whom the Repubs thought was the devil. Then W, whom the Dems thought was the devil. Now Obama, and the Repubs think he is the devil.
If the leader is really that utterly evil, calculating, vicious, cruel, filled with lies, exploitative, etc etc etc, and if you _really_ believe that, how can you be satisfied with merely sounding off? Both W and Obama seem to be viewed by their opponents as being as bad as Hitler or Stalin or Mao or Amin or [insert legendarily depraved figure here.]
I can’t perceive any use of the toxic ‘debate’ that goes on in American politics except to possibly swing an insignificant few back and forth every few years. Each side (Left and Right) seems so viciously opposed and filled with hate for the other.
Speaking of critical thinking skills… I’m seeing 8:17 Eastern Standard Time on 9/9/09 on my PC right now and yet the two previous comments were posted (supposedly) at 9:29 and 11:03 respectively.
A primer on American “politics” for Canadian poster, Wondering:
The expression “culture wars” is not just a cute buzz phrase. We are in a war in America. The ground of consensus has shrunk dramatically and alarmingly for several decades. We are multiple nations occupying the same land. Politics has broken completely out of it’s box. Everything is political and all politics is fought as unlimited warfare. Nothing is ever settled; ground is merely lost and won. And very little that is ever spoken publicly in politics is honest; motives are hidden and the rhetoric is as cynical as advertising copy. It is the propaganda front of the war. And the media in the U.S., which used to make at least some effort to stand objectively aside, has completely thrown in with one side. They enrage conservatives with their partisan distortions. Conservatives answer back with some radio commentary that is pretty raw.
You might be thinking that I am about to say how senseless this all us, as you seem to feel. Actually, I want to kill the b@stards on the other side. It was ~the Left~ that decided to bring every grievance that anyone had about anything into the political arena and fight it out in unlimited warfare. I mark the effort to destroy Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork as the most important landmark in this history. Liberals made the calculated decision to assault the character of a perfectly honorable man as an act of political warfare. It has been back and forth ever since. Now I feel the bitterness of the two sides in Northern Ireland. I sort of regret that the idea of civil war is such an anachronism. The feelings are just that deep and angry and widespread.
Here’s some critical thinking, “You lie!” — Representative Joe Wilson
Actually, I was a bit disappointed that Wilson didn’t go into full-bore eighteenth-century South Carolina cavalier mode and cry, “You lie, you rogue!” And then throw down his gauntlet and challenge Obama to a duel.
Susan…I’d have thought it a hoot if Wilson had gone all Preston Brooks on Obama’s lying butt.
Heather, the reason you and other reasonable people found the “knee jerk opposition to the speech” as “another depressing sign of how paranoid and overheated the opposition to Obama had become” had nothing to do with whether you were ever going to like the speech.
Of course you and plenty other people could and would find the speech to be something other than inspiring. The knee jerk opposition was never based on the content of the speech but rather on the sentiment that “this guy’s got no right to talk to my kids and you have no right to force them to listen; He’s not MY president”.
But he is; He’s the President of the United States. Bush supporters rightly criticized some Bush critics for the lack of respect they showed for their president, but now those same Bush supporters are doing the same thing.
Go ahead and critique the content of the speech, but don’t get all offended that he has the gall to presume to address the kids of America on their first day of school. Its perfectly normal for the president to do such things.
Begock, good sir. How couldst I have forgotten Preston Brooks? You have indeed a pretty wit.
Nonetheless, my scenario would involve the spectacle of Joe Biden (as second) trying to load a dueling pistol.
“I’m not ready to buy into the entire right-wing critique of Obama as a dangerous threat to liberty or as the very embodiment of ‘The Left.'”
Love your writing and mental style, but I have to wonder what evidence you’d have to observe in order to “buy into” that. If it isn’t clear by now that Obama is a committed Progressive – and hence the very embodiment of ‘The Left’, and therefore a threat to liberty – one wonders what you would have to observe to reach that conclusion. I know you’re far too perspicacious to require actual Black Shirts on display.
Obama wouldn’t choose Biden as second for fear he’d shoot his mouth off.
Oh, wait. That didn’t deter him previously.
and make our nation more fair and more free.”
Isn’t it idiomatic English to say “fairer and more free”? Just asking. With the education thing and all.
Heck, I’m an idiot too. S/B fairer and freer. Tell me I’m wrong.
Does anyone see the irony, the hypocrisy in the president?
He has such faith/confidence in Public Institutions but he didn’t even “risk” attending a public university, college or law school. No when it came to his education he trusted only the private sector to his mind. He even taught at a private law school. Where is his public-mindedness when it comes to his own education?
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Obama had to encourage the kiddies to work hard and become financially successful, because he has already spent all their salaries.
His speech was not pompous, he had an agenda… Get ’em young… http://www.puma08.com/2009/09/02/sept-8th-here-are-two-of-the-books-on-obama-your-kids-are-expected-to-read/
My 16 year old had the displeasure of listening to his speech during school (and why exactly are my tax dollars paying for that, or the publication of his propoganda?) He said that the speech was rediculous and came off accusingly about how students aren’t doing their job in learning so that they can take care of others. I’m glad atleast my son is independant enough to have seen the socialist agenda behind the Obamantion’s dialogue. Courtesy of their agenda and their policy, I’ve switched parties…
Obama would like to be all things to all people, and he may be educated, but he is truly not that bright as a free thinker. If he were he would not have interrupted his national address on the health care issued to make comments about the Boston police arresting a Professor. He admitted that he didn’t know the facts of the case, but still stated that the police acted ‘stupidly’. In my opinion, not the verbiage chosen by someone who professes to be well educated.
Everyone seems to see the individual things he’s done and raises questions, but it all needs to be looked as a whole… mandatory volunteerism? I fear for where this nation will be when the youth of today grow up. My ancestors fought for the freedom of our country, freedom of democracy, and I see a strong attempt to have many of our freedoms taken away!
@Someone who knows
You are absolutely correct and it is unclear if he is so much lite as he is early. I think he would outdo Chavez in time if he gets the time he wants. Kill the bill and change congress. impeachment is the best solution to the problem that is a Trojan Horse president.
“How about for the love of learning and beauty? How about because facts matter? ”
Only those with high intelligence can benefit from such study. Most everyone else will be bored by such intellectual rumination.
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