Dear Leader speaks to the little ones, Part II

Obama's speech to public school students seems to be drawing mixed reactions; there are those who find it an incredibly creepy intrusion of the State and are responding with with threats to take their children out of school and there are those who can't quite grasp what the big deal is and tend to think that those in the former camp are over-reacting. After all, if the address is not being introduced by Miley Cyrus or the Jonas Brothers, are the kids really going to pay attention anyway?

The latter view, I think, dismisses the intent behind the event in the first place. And what exactly is it that Obama wants to tell our children? In his own words (emphasis mine):

"I'm going to be making a big speech to young people all across the country about the importance of education; about the importance of staying in school; how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country. So I hope everybody tunes in."

So, it's a policy speech aimed at children? What could possibly be the point? What could possibly be the harm? Will children even pay attention?

That brings me to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education foundation that Obama led from 1995-99 and brainchild of Weather Underground radical, Bill Ayers. From Stanley Kurtz's September 23, 2008 WSJ Article:

One unsettled question is how Mr. Obama, a former community organizer fresh out of law school, could vault to the top of a new foundation? In response to my questions, the Obama campaign issued a statement saying that Mr. Ayers had nothing to do with Obama's "recruitment" to the board. The statement says Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham (presidents of other foundations) recruited him. Yet the archives show that, along with Ms. Leff and Ms. Graham, Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I'm a radical, Leftist, small 'c' communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk's, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

Nope. Nothing to see here.

The Cato Institute responds:

It's one thing for a president to encourage all kids to work hard and stay in school – that's a reasonable use of the bully pulpit. It's another thing entirely, however, to have the U.S. Department of Education send detailed instructions to public schools nationwide on how to glorify the president and the presidency, and push them to drive social change. Frighteningly, this is what President Obama has done.

In anticipation of the president's planned September 8 address to students nationwide, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent a letter and detailed "classroom activities" to schools with all sorts of troubling buzzwords and guidance. In his letter, Duncan asserts that the work of educators is "critical to…our social progress." It's a statement that strongly suggests – as many educators have held and continue to hold – that it is the job of public schools to impose values, often collectivist, on students.

The fear that this might be the case is reinforced by classroom activities for pre-K-6 students that encourages children to make posters setting out "community and country" goals. Perhaps even more frightening is the lesson schools are pushed to teach that it is important to listen to "the President and other elected officials." Possibly most distressing of all, though, is guidance that appears explicitly designed to glorify both the presidency and President Obama himself, encouraging schools to prepare for the speech "by reading books about presidents and Barack Obama." And schools are told to ask students how president Obama will "inspire" them in his speech before he gives it, and how they were inspired after Obama has spoken.

And Jim Greer, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, says:

"The address scheduled for September 8, 2009, does not allow for healthy debate on the President's agenda, but rather obligates the youngest children in our public school system to agree with our President's initiatives or be ostracized by their teachers and classmates."

I think I understand the motivation of teachers who believe that this is a good thing; they see first hand a lot of the effects of bad parenting. As parents abdicate more and more of their traditional roles to the public schools, teachers are called upon to step in where a parent normally would have. Though we can debate the causes and effects of an "it takes a village" mentality on the general populace, an unarguable result is that people invariably begin looking toward the government instead of themselves to solve their problems. Teachers, who bear the brunt of this phenomenom on the front lines, undoubtedly welcome a "stay in school and do your homework" speech from a man who commands cult like reverence from his supporters, particularly the youth of America whom he successfully mobilized to win the election.

We can also debate the merits of the expansion of the State's power over a public that is increasingly unwilling to accept personal responsibility, and indeed, that is a post for another time. For now, though, I don't think it is even a little bit of an over-reaction to protest Obama's speech to children, nor to opt your children out of it. I think it is nothing less than a stand for independence and freedom.