By Nan Cooper / Staff

On Tuesday at noon, President Obama delivered a 15-minute speech from Wakefield High School in Arlington, VA intending to reach all of our school children.  It was carried live by C-SPAN and streamed via webcast from the White House (www.WhiteHouse.gov).  This speech drew much fire from parents who were concerned about the President’s circumvention of parental control to deliver a political message, fueled by talk radio that whipped people into a frenzy in the weeks leading up to it.

Rather than carrying a political message, the speech primarily welcomed students back to school by asking them to set goals, work hard, and achieve positive results.  President Obama emphasized that our country needs our children to be successful. 

Conservatives in talk radio immediately turned around and took credit for pressuring Obama to water down the more partisan elements of the proposed speech, which they claimed was in the first draft.

Some parents questioned the usefulness of such a diversion from instruction time.  Lori Thomas, a parent of four children in the Fulton County School System (FCSS) said, “It just doesn’t make sense to disrupt the day to hear a message that doesn’t fit in with the curriculum.”  

Chris Britt, parent of a third grader, reacted to parents who worried about inappropriate content by saying, “The speech was targeted to children so it was tailored and relative to kids.”  

According to the Washington Examiner, a similar fire storm was created in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush delivered a videotaped speech to school children from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. that had almost the same message.  “Block out the kids who think it’s not cool to be smart,” President Bush 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.”

SAME RHETORIC, DIFFERENT DAY

Richard Gephardt, then the Democrat House Majority Leader, led the attack by saying, “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the President, it should be helping us to produce smarter students.”  The Democrats went as far as ordering the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush’s appearance. Getting on the bandwagon, 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.”

President Obama’s speech, announced on September 2, included suggested lesson plans from the federal Department of Education (DE) developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion about persisting and succeeding in school.   Even after all the controversy, these plans did not change substantially from when they were first released until the time of the speech.  Perhaps the President’s address did not change substantially during this time, either.

FULTON COUNTY EMPOWERS TEACHERS, NOT POLTICIANS

In Fulton County, Superintendant Dr. Cindy Loe sent a memo to every school principal reminding them that FCSS “focuses on instruction and teaching the state’s new curriculum, the Georgia Performance Standards . . . Daily instructional time is a precious resource; therefore, schools are under no obligation to watch the address.”   The memo went on to say that if the webcast was viewed, parents would need to be notified ahead of time and be allowed to opt-out.  The suggested lesson plans offered by the DE were not to be used as they are not a part of the required state curriculum.

Jerome Huff, principal at Roswell North Elementary (RNE), wrote in his weekly newsletter on September 4, that while there would not be a school wide viewing, it would be taped for teachers to use in their social studies lesson when appropriate.  Huff went on to add that, “It sounds like this speech is something we talk about at school each day and a subject I’m sure you talk about at home as well.”

Other area schools took varying positions.  Hembree Springs Elementary School’s position was similar to RNE’s while Sweetapple Elementary School showed the speech in individual classrooms on Thursday.  Roswell High School left the decision up to individual teachers and while Chattahoochee High School did not show it live, they did tape it.  Mountain Park Elementary did not air the speech, advising parents in an email how to access it to watch with their children at home.  Area private schools like High Meadows and Blessed Trinity did not show the speech.  Fulton Science Academy (a charter middle school in Alpharetta) did attempt to show it live in individual classrooms, but ran into technical difficulties.  The record breaking 184,000 viewers accessing the White House site most likely caused these difficulties. 

Once the speech was over, most parents didn’t really care if their kids saw it or not.  It became a non-issue and will be lost in the bigger political fires to burn.