President Barack Obama
Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer says Obama’s school speech uses taxpayer dollars (i.e., your dollars) to indoctrinate your children.
As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.
Source: CNN
Really. Do you support compulsory government-funded education? Okay, there’s no point in asking that.
Anyway, I found nothing particularly objectionable in the speech itself. You can read it here (whitehouse.gov), if you dare. That’s right. It’s on the Internet, where anyone might see it.
Most seem to object to the content of the lesson plan.
[...] Critics objected to the language of one of the lesson plans, for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 6, that suggested that students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what “the president wants us to do.”
Source: FOX News
That letter writing exercise has been changed. It is now “Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.” (Ibid.)
Okay. It takes some fine parsing to take offense at the original plan, but then many believe that the Obama administration is making use of subtle linguistic cues to help liberal educators spread a message of socialism. Nothing can be done to help such people. But what about the speech?
I can’t imagine how seeing Obama’s face on television would have scarred me. Write a letter? What did Obama say he wanted me to do? Stay in school? Thankfully I only heard that from video games, along with “Winners don’t use drugs!” Of course, I did stay in school and didn’t use drugs, so the damage was done. Hopefully there’s still time to save this generation from my fate. Teaching ill-defined fear of our elected leaders is a good way to start.
