Among other things children will be told to write letters to themselves about that they can do to help the president, which will be collected by teachers to hold students to account.
“ABC” stands for All Barack’s Children. On Sept. 8,young students across the country will be watching television. Yes,they’ll be parked in front of boob tubes and computer screens watchingPresident Obama’s address on education.
Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables,diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kidswill be lectured about the importance of learning. And then theschoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will beexhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receiveacademic instruction, that is.
EducationSecretary Arne Duncan dispatched letters to principals nationwide,boasting, “This is the first time an American president has spokendirectly to the nation’s schoolchildren about persisting and succeedingin school.” But the goal is not merely morale boosting. According toWhite House event-related guides developed by the U.S. Department ofEducation’s Teaching Fellows, grade-school students will be told to”listen to the speech” and “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?
Studentscan record important parts of the speech where the president is askingthem to do something. Students might think about: What specific job ishe 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’sWhite House Teaching Fellows include Chicago high-school educator XianBarrett, a fierce opponent of charter schools who founded a “SocialJustice Club” and bussed students to protests; and Michelle Bissonette,a Los Altos, Calif., teacher who is “focused on developing myleadership as a more culturally and racially conscious educator.”
The activist tradition of government schools using students as juniorlobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teachers unions have enlistedcaptive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for highereducation spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted theirsecondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gaymarriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-warevents.
And last year’s presidential campaign saw disgraceful abuses of powerby pro-Obama instructors. In New Rochelle, NY, elementary students weregiven an in-class assignment to color in drawings of Obama — includinga picture of a campaign button featuring his face and the slogan”Students for Obama 2008.” In Cumberland County, NC, a fifth-gradeteacher turned a “civics” discussion into an unhinged harangue againsta girl who said her family supported John McCain.
Nor can the Democrats’ strategy of using kiddie human shields toadvance their legislative agenda be overlooked in the context andtiming of Obama’s speech. Children have been front and center of theleft’s push for an ever-increasing government role in healthcare –from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s use of Baltimoreseventh-grader Graeme Frost to push for the massive S-CHIP entitlementexpansion to Obama’s none-too-coincidental choice of Massachusetts11-year-old town hall questioner Julia Hall (the daughter of aprominent Obama activist and organizer who assailed Obamacare critics'”mean” signs) to the Kennedy family’s decision to put grandson MaxAllen on center stage to pray for healthcare reform at his uncle’sfuneral last week.
So when the Department of Education directs schools to gather children’round the TV monitors for Obama’s pep talk and then have them dothis…
— Create posters of their goals.Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trailsmarked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country. Eacharea could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in thoseareas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic socommunity and country goals come more readily.
— Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later dateby the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.
…parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change.