A teacher's thoughts before Obama's speech
Today is Labor Day, a national holiday in the US. Despite the fact that we didn’t have school, I received an email from my principal. It was about the speech President Obama will be delivering live tomorrow to schoolchildren across the country, many of whom will be attending their first school-day of the year (we’ve been in session for two weeks already). The email said (in part):
We will not be shutting down campus, nor having a special assembly for this speech. However, if you feel that you can create a lesson that will improve academic achievement in your subject area, please feel free to use the speech as a resource.
As a school we do not want to get into a debate regarding the politics of this speech, however, as always we want to concern ourselves with the decision of whether or not this resource will enhance the education of our students. For this, we leave up to you as the professionals in our building.
The email also suggested that we hit the White House website for a copy of the speech and lesson plans to help use it in a meaningful way.
Both regular readers of this blog may be surprised to learn that I found the decision disappointing. I wrote the following response back to my principal:
For the record, this seems to me to be a missed opportunity. Asking me to give up class time for my students to listen to the President only if doing so “will improve academic achievement in my subject area” is far too narrow a litmus test. I’ve read President Obama’s prepared remarks and there is nothing in there that speaks specifically to my class. However, as both a teacher and parent, I think every student in the school should hear his speech tomorrow.
And, please understand that I am not motivated by political beliefs; I didn’t vote for President Obama and disagree with a great number of his policies.
There is nothing political about the speech; if either you or I had the pulpit, skill and opportunity, we would deliver the very same message to as many students as would listen. We talk almost daily about how our students are lazy and lack the vision to see how important their studies are. Why would we decide not to let them hear the President of the United States tell them that, “No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. […] You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in”?
I do have class at noon tomorrow and will be pausing for the ten minutes it will take to listen to the President. I wish I had more time to spend discussing with them the themes he will touch upon and I think it’s a shame that students not in my class may not have the opportunity to listen as well.
Please take this email as it was intended, with respect for your authority and position. I simply feel strongly about both the power of oratory and the tragedy of missed opportunities. The President’s speech could be a life-long memory for one of our students and I would hate to not allow for that possibility.
That was yesterday. I came into school this morning and checked in with my principal… who wasn’t upset with me. As a matter of fact, he told me that he agrees with me, both in my lack of support for most of the President’s policies and my belief that we should watch the speech today. He told me he was stuck on the horns of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma and that he has already received email and phone calls from parents who are planning on advising their children to skip class if the speech is played.
It would be funny… if it weren’t true. It’s like a bad joke on Weekend Report on SNL. Jim Greer, my state’s very own Republican Party chairman, embarassed us all a week ago when he famously said, ”As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology” and “I do not support using our children as tools to spread liberal propaganda.”
As the father of five children, a teacher and an opponent of most of President Obama’s socialist ideology, let me say that, yes, I am appalled by Greer’s lack of perspective, prejudice and decision to speak before he had all the facts.
A Presidential Address to schoolchildren is not, as Greer called it, an “invasive abuse of power.” It is an exciting opportunity to show students how our government works and to pull back the curtain and honestly expose the challenge and difficulties inherent in both his and their lives.
I will be pausing my web design class to show the speech and spend some time discussing how the Obama Administration is using web technologies in innovative ways. I only wish I had more time to spend on it and that more students were going to hear it.
