Not My Children - Obama's Address to School Children

I'm just totally tilted on this one. I called my children's school administration about this today. I guess many parents have been. They have decided to tape the President's address and then send home permission slips as to if your children want to view this or not. I need to do another follow up asking what they children that don't watch will be doing and where these permission slips will be ending up at??? Call me paranoid if you want.

I have seen comments all over the web and on local message boards by people saying they don't see why this is a problem. Really??? I don't care what president it is and what letter they have behind their name, they have no business addressing the children of our nation in our schools.

The following is a piece from Michelle Malkin's website.

My syndicated column today digs a little deeper into President Obama’s September 8 speech to schoolchildren. The school guides now featured front and center on the www.ed.gov website were developed by the White House Teaching Fellows — a group which includes several activist educators as you’ll see below.

Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in old neighborhood pal and Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers’ pedagogical philosophy. It was the Chicago Annenberg Challenge way when the two served as board members of the educational foundation — and it is the Washington Obama way now.

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Obama’s classroom campaign: No junior lobbyist left behind
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2009

“ABC” stands for All Barack’s Children. On September 8, young students across the country will be watching television. Yes, they’ll be parked in front of the boob tube and computer screens watching President Obama’s address on education.

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan dispatched letters to principals nationwide boasting that “This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation’s school children about persisting and succeeding in school.” But the goal is not merely morale-boosting. According to White House event-related guides developed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Teaching Fellows, grade-school students will be told to “listen to the speech” and “could think about the following:”

*What is the President trying to tell me?

*What is the President asking me to do?

*What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

After the speech, teachers will ask students:

*What do you think the President wants us to do?

*Does the speech make you want to do anything?

*Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

Obama’s White House Teaching Fellows include Chicago high school educator Xian Barrett, a fierce opponent of charter schools who founded a “Social Justice Club” and bussed students to protests and Michelle Bissonette, a Los Altos, Calif., teacher who is “focused on developing my leadership as a more culturally and racially conscious educator.”

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

And last year’s presidential campaign saw disgraceful abuses of power by pro-Obama instructors. In New Rochelle, New York, elementary students were given an in-class assignment to color in drawings of Barack Obama – including a picture of a campaign button featuring his face and the slogan “Students for Obama 2008.”