Professional Soldiers ® - September 8, 2009

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- The Early Bird (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=45)

- - September 8, 2009 (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24798)

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...9XVfQD9AGK7880

Gibbs: Furor over school speech is 'silly season'

By BEN FELLER (AP) – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON — The White House on Friday dismissed as pointless the furor over President Barack Obama's plan to deliver a televised back-to-school speech to the nation's students.

"I think we've reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can't tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school," presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. "I think both political parties agree that the dropout rate is something that threatens our long-term economic success."....

Oh, that's it: it's all about improving the economy!
Sorry, Mr. Gibbs, but if I didn't know better, I'd say that you were loosing the trust of the American people.

Didn't lose my trust.

Never had it to begin with.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Team Sergeant (Post 281853)

I think I'll go and clean my guns and later purchase some more ammo at the non-union Wal-Mart.;)

TS

reminds me of:
"When they come for my guns, I don't mind giving them away.......one bullet at a time"
:D

I was quite pleased to receive this notice from our School district. Unfortunately it still left an open-end to the presentation, but the immediate threat has been put aside. There is a reason I live in the area that I live.

Quote:

To: All Principals From: Dr. _________________, Superintendent
RE: Activities for September 8, 2009

Recently we have been made aware of a planned speech by President Obama to the nation’s children scheduled to be delivered at 12:00 on September 8th. The U.S. Department of Education has developed a menu of potential classroom activities to use before, during and after the speech. Unfortunately, we just received this information today.

Because we are closed on September 4 and September 7, we have determined that there is inadequate planning time for our students to listen to this speech live on September 8th.
As per our Video Usage Policy, teachers must preview material in its entirety before it is used in the classroom.
We will record the message and determine at a later time how it can most appropriately be used with our students.:(
Also, several parents have already contacted us asking for the option of excluding their children from this presentation. We need to make certain our community is aware of this planned activity and afford them the opportunity to have input into the proposed program. To be clear, no teacher should be showing this speech to their students on September 8. Mr. _________________, Assistant Superintendent, will provide further instruction next week. This information will also be posted on our website

Ret10Echo.. I also like where you live.

I am hard at work, home schooling my kids...

:lifter

My husband and I spent some time discussing this yesterday, and some time discussing it with our daughter.

She is in 7th grade and I think mature enough to start discussing politics. She hears her father and I discuss it at home virtually every night. She gets ready for school in morning watching the news.

We have both spoken to her about the fact that we respect the Office of the President of the United States, regardless of who is sitting in that seat. That does not mean we agree with the policies or the actions of the person currently sitting in that seat.

We discussed with her that her father and I have spent a lifetime swearing to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the POTUS.

I personally think this will be a good learning experience for her. I thought about going and sitting in her classroom, but decided against it. I told her we will discuss it when she gets home Tuesday night, and what was said in class. We will go from there.

Just found this note about pre-Sept 8th suggested reading list for K-6..

I don't think PETA will like the 5th from the bottom??

Quote:

Originally Posted by afchic (Post 282123)

This is the decision I reached as well. I like my kids to be subjected to all points of view. It can lead to very healthy discussions with your child. My child, in the 10th grade, surprises me with his grasp of issues when we discuss his questions. And, the presidents message may turn out to be very worthwhile, you never know

Quote:

Originally Posted by JJ_BPK (Post 282170)

Just found this note about pre-Sept 8th suggested reading list for K-6..

JJ, have you been visiting my kids' elementary school? :D

Pretty good summary from NPR yesterday afternoon. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Quote:

Obama Speech To Students Faces Opposition
NPR, 4 Sep 2009

When children all across the country return to school Tuesday, some will see a welcoming message from President Barack Obama and some won't.

Obama's planned address to students has touched off yet another confrontation with Republican critics, who have battered the White House over health care and now accuse the president of foisting a political agenda on children.

The president hopes to speak directly to students Tuesday about the need to work hard and stay in school. His address will be shown live on the White House Web site and on C-SPAN at noon EDT, a time when classrooms across the country will be able to tune in.

Schools don't have to show it. But districts across the country have been inundated with phone calls from parents and are struggling to address the controversy that broke out after Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals urging schools to tune in.

Districts in states including Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin have decided not to show the speech to students. Others are still thinking it over or are letting parents have their kids opt out.

Some conservatives, driven by radio pundits and bloggers, are urging schools and parents to boycott the address. They say Obama is using the opportunity to promote a political agenda and is overstepping the boundaries of federal involvement in schools.

"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education — it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said state Sen. Steve Russell of Oklahoma, a Republican. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."

Arizona state schools superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican, said lesson plans for teachers created by Obama's Education Department "call for a worshipful rather than critical approach."

The White House plans to release the speech online Monday so parents can read it. The president will deliver the speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.

"I think it's really unfortunate that politics has been brought into this," White House deputy policy director Heather Higginbottom said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"It's simply a plea to students to really take their learning seriously. Find out what they're good at. Set goals. And take the school year seriously."

She noted that President George H.W. Bush made a similar address to schools in 1991. Like Obama, Bush drew criticism, with Democrats accusing the Republican president of making the event into a campaign commercial.

Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online, originally recommended having students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president."

The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could "write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals."

"That was inartfully worded, and we corrected it," Higginbottom said.

In the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, the 54,000-student school district is not showing the 15- to 20-minute address but will make the video available later.

PTA council president Cara Mendelsohn said Obama is "cutting out the parent" by speaking to kids during school hours.

"Why can't a parent be watching this with their kid in the evening?" Mendelsohn said. "Because that's what makes a powerful statement, when a parent is sitting there saying, 'This is what I dream for you. This is what I want you to achieve."'

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, said in an interview with the AP that he's "certainly not going to advise anybody not to send their kids to school that day."

"Hearing the president speak is always a memorable moment," he said.

But he also said he understood where the criticism was coming from.

"Nobody seems to know what he's going to be talking about," Perry said. "Why didn't he spend more time talking to the local districts and superintendents, at least give them a heads-up about it?"

Several other Texas districts have decided not to show the speech, although the district in Houston is leaving the decision up to individual school principals. In suburban Houston, the Cypress-Fairbanks district planned to show the address and has had its social studies teachers assemble a curriculum and activities for students.

In Wisconsin, the Green Bay school district decided not to show the speech live and to let teachers decide individually whether to show it later.

Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer said in a statement he was "absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology." Despite his rhetoric, two of the larger Florida districts, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, plan to have classes watch the speech. Students whose parents object will not have to watch.

The Minnesota Association of School Administrators is recommending against disrupting the first day of school to show the speech, but Minnesota's biggest teachers' union is urging schools to show it.

Quincy, Ill., schools decided Thursday not to show the speech. Superintendent Lonny Lemon said phone calls "hit like a load of bricks" on Wednesday.

One Idaho school superintendent, Murray Dalgleish of Council, urged people not to rush to judgment.

"Is the president dictating to these kids? I don't think so," Dalgleish said. "He's trying to get out the same message we're trying to get out, which is, 'You are in charge of your education."'

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=112552947

Quote:

"Why can't a parent be watching this with their kid in the evening?" Mendelsohn said. "Because that's what makes a powerful statement, when a parent is sitting there saying, 'This is what I dream for you. This is what I want you to achieve."'

This would be much better IMO. Yes...I realize there are some parents that don't take the time or interest in their children, but for those that do this allows for some further discussions in the home.

Besides, the message should be about education and how it can help the individual child...and I guess ultimately the country, not "the president".

Here's another take on this speech.

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/mma...mm_09041.shtml

Why Parents Don't Trust the Educator-in-Chief and His Comrades
By Michelle Malkin
September 4, 2009

They think we're crazy. "They" are the sneering defenders of Barack Obama who can't fathom the backlash against the president's nationwide speech to schoolchildren next Tuesday. "We" are parents with eyes wide open to the potential for politicized abuse in America's classrooms.

Ask moms and dads in Farmington, Utah, who discovered this week that their children sat through a Hollywood propaganda video promoting the cult of Obama. In the clip, a parade of entertainers vow to flush their toilets less, buy hybrid vehicles, end poverty and world hunger, and commit to "service" for "change." Actress Demi Moore leads the glitterati in a collective promise "to be a servant to our president." Musician Anthony Kiedis pledges "to be of service to Barack Obama."

The campaign commercial crescendos with the stars and starlets asking their audience: "What's your pledge?"

This same "Do Something" ethos infected the U.S. Department of Education teachers guides accompanying the announcement of Obama's speech -- until late Wednesday, that is, when the White House removed some of the activist language exhorting students to come up with ways to "help the president." Education Secretary Arne Duncan had disseminated the material directly to principals across the country -- circumventing elected school board members and superintendents now facing neighborhood revolts.

O's bureaucrats can whitewash offending language from the Sept. 8 speech-related documents, but they can't remove the taint of left-wing radicalism that informs Obama and his education mentors. A spokesman maintained that the speech is "about the value of education and the importance of staying in school as part of his effort to dramatically cut the dropout rate." But the historical subtext is far less innocent.

Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative. Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Ayers' pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the program's first chairman of the board, while Ayers steered its curricular policy. The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise ACORN and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky -- a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.

As investigative journalist Stanley Kurtz reported, Klonsky and Ayers teamed up on the so-called "small schools movement" to steer schoolchildren away from core academics to left-wing politicking on issues of "inequity, war and violence."

A cadre of like-minded educators and national service administrators across the country share the same core commitment to transforming themselves from imparters of knowledge to transformers of society. The "change" agenda trains students to think only about what they should do for Obama -- and rarely to contemplate how his powers and ambitions should be limited and restrained.

Ayers preached his education-as-"social justice" agenda to his "comrades" at the World Education Forum in Caracas, Venezuela, three years ago:

"This is my fourth visit to Venezuela, each time at the invitation of my comrade and friend Luis Bonilla, a brilliant educator and inspiring fighter for justice. Luis has taught me a great deal about the Bolivarian Revolution and about the profound educational reforms underway here in Venezuela under the leadership of President (Hugo) Chavez. We share the belief that education is the motor-force of revolution, and I've come to appreciate Luis as a major asset in both the Venezuelan and the international struggle -- I look forward to seeing how he and all of you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane."

Ayers continued:

"I walked out of jail and into my first teaching position -- and from that day until this I've thought of myself as a teacher, but I've also understood teaching as a project intimately connected with social justice. After all, the fundamental message of the teacher is this: You can change your life -- whoever you are, wherever you've been, whatever you've done, another world is possible. As students and teachers begin to see themselves as linked to one another, as tied to history and capable of collective action, the fundamental message of teaching shifts slightly, and becomes broader, more generous: We must change ourselves as we come together to change the world. Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!"

This is why informed parents do not trust the Educator-in-Chief and his "comrades." You can take Obama from the radicals in Chicago. But you can't take the Chicago radicalism out of Obama.

---

Michelle Malkin is the author of the forthcoming "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2009).

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM

Richard got the better of me...

I still think it is an intrusion on my little ones, I think it is overstepping and I won't change my mind about that. But I think I will go sit in and watch....that way I can see what goes on with my own eyes and then I can carry on a knowledgeable discussion with my kids if need be.

Keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer comes to mind. Which I believes comes down to you cannot put up a good fight against an enemy you have little knowledge of.

So the lack of, or shall we say shortage of, students advancing in post-secondary education is a result of the children's lack of understanding of how important education is?

Copy of the Speach

Copy of the Speach can be found here.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResou...SchoolRemarks/

All in all, this version is pretty good.

Kinda' shorted his step dad and grandparents though.

In all this hoopla' over Obama's speach to school kids you keep hearing from the left that "Bush did it."

Well just what happened before and after Oct 1, 1991?

"When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings"

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...-57694347.html

"........That didn't stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it "cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters."

Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. "Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart," the president told students. "If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams............"

Once again the MSM sides with the libs by failing to tell "The rest of the story."