Thread: Texas school that declined Obama speech will bus kids to

Parents get an F for 'pep talk' boycott

Plain Talk By Al Neuharth, USA TODAY Founder

Most of our 50 million-plus students heard President Obama this week urge them to stay in school and study hard. But many kids didn't hear him because their parents kept them home or told teachers not to let them listen. Lessons learned:

• Pity the kids who were denied a chance for a "pep talk" from a president.

• Pity their moms and dads even more. They deserve an F on their report cards as parents.

You have to be crazy to say your kids can't listen to a president of the United States, no matter the political party or race (or gender).

When I was a kid, my widowed mother required my older brother, Walter, and me to listen to the famous "fireside chats" of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat. Unfortunately for us kids, they usually came in the evening and interrupted playtime.

My mom loved Roosevelt because of what he did to help provide some jobs and some food in our Depression-drudged South Dakota. But because I was a bit of a rebellious kid, I was not an FDR fan.

When Republican Wendell Willkie challenged FDR in the 1940 election, I was all for Willkie. Instead of "protecting" me from him, my mom helped me get to the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., to hear him.

Roosevelt won the election. Both my mom and I won, too.

Kids suffer when their parents' prejudices about politics keep them from learning what it's all about.

President Obama's pep talk this week should wake up prejudiced parents to the fact that their kids deserve a chance to hear it all, see it all and make up their own minds.
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Other views on Obama speech to students
"It's the subtext that troubled parents. White House teaching guides encouraged activist zeal in the classroom. Secondary schools have long used students as junior lobbyists."

— Michelle Malkin, author, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies
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"It is positive any time a U.S. president speaks directly to students about the responsibility they have for their education and to their families, their country and themselves."

— Charles Saylors, president, National PTA--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted at 12:17 AM/ET, September 11, 2009 in Education - Forum, Forum commentary, Plain Talk, Politics, Government - Forum
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azwreath wrote,

My mistake JD2.

That was reguarding wether the event was at a football game or at a football stadium. Niether one had much to do with the debate of the original article being misleading or bogus.

The debate was about Bush and a event AND the timing, vs Wonder Boy and his planned assualt.

The debate should have ended with no hurt feelings anywhere across the spectrum when the article was found to be misleading, PERIOD.

Low blow, JohnDoe2

You have to be crazy to say your kids can't listen to a president of the United States, no matter the political party or race (or gender).

Really

When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
09/08/09 7:11 AM EDT

The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. 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.'"

Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. "The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC," Ford began. "As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event."

Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. "The speech itself and the use of the department's funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal," the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. "The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda."

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.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opini ... 94347.html

2 trustees apologize for votes on speech

School board decided, 3-2, not to show Obama's talk

By Michele Clock
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. September 11, 2009

LA MESA — As angry parents planned to confront the La Mesa-Spring Valley school board at a meeting next week over its decision preventing teachers from showing President Barack Obama's education speech to students the day it aired, two board members yesterday issued apologies for their votes.

Board President Penny Halgren and Trustee Bob Duff — two of the three who voted to not show the speech Tuesday — said they were mistaken.
“If I could roll back the clock and do it again, my vote would have been to show the speech live in our classrooms,â€

Originally Posted by roundabout

azwreath wrote,

My mistake JD2.

That was reguarding wether the event was at a football game or at a football stadium. Niether one had much to do with the debate of the original article being misleading or bogus.

The debate was about Bush and a event AND the timing, vs Wonder Boy and his planned assualt.

The debate should have ended with no hurt feelings anywhere across the spectrum when the article was found to be misleading, PERIOD.

Low blow, JohnDoe2

Thank you Roundabout......you got it exactly right.

No worries, JD2 has neither the ability or the power to hurt my feelings or otherwise bother me in any way, shape, or form.

It's just all part of the tactic, as laid out in that worm eaten and obsolete tome "Rules for Radicals".....easily recognizable for what it is. Ridicule of, and demoralizing, "the target" is specifically mentioned as just another of the same old tired, worn out, washed up, and now-ineffective strategies which are heading the way of the dinosaur, aging hippies, soon to be defunct radical organizations and unseated politicians.

It only works if you let it and it's just one big yawn to me

Your rabit seems to be making a personal attack for you.

LOL

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

[b]


Your rabit seems to be making a personal attack for you.

LOL

It would only be considered a personal attack by stupid people if they were smart enough to realize that they are....in fact......stupid.

And, if our current government is any indication, the odds are against that.





PS: It's "rabbit"

OOH. I had a typo.

Arthritic fingers sometimes don't hit the keys hard enough.

(So now I guess you are making fun of people with health problems.)

Why don't you go harass someone else for a while?