Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade.Can any speech be good for such wide range of ages? 2540 words should take at least 15 minutes to deliver. Who gives a 15 minute speech to kindergartners?
I’m glad you all could join us today.Students tuning in? Glad you could join us? It's not voluntary.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning."This is no picnic for me either, buster" is a long-time laugh line for Obama, but it's not exactly comprehensible to kids. Do kindergartners and first graders understand what a foreign country is? Do elementary school students recognize the word "Indonesia"? Will students understand why going to school with people other than Americans is so bad? (Isn't it prejudiced to think that? a bright child might wonder.)
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."
And what sort of mother wakes a kid up before dawn to teach him lessons? (Some parents say "I'll teach you a lesson" as a prelude to punishment.) Frankly, I don't even understand why the mother picked pre-dawn for lesson time. It seems a bit abusive. And I don't see what so funny when the abusers says "This hurts me too." Is a mother calling her child "buster" funny to little kids, or does it seem sad or scary?
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you...It's not a discussion. He's on television.
Okay, I've got to stop. I'm not going to reprint the whole thing. It's way too long. I'll summarize. As it goes on, he develops the theme of students taking responsibility for their own education, including and especially when they don't have responsible adults in their life watching over them.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.Now, that's very nice free market capitalism — not that Obama's policies reflect this spirit.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America....
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.So can you "write your own destiny" and "make your own future" or not? It's confusing.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.But I thought we weren't supposed to think we could make it at basketball! That's downright perplexing. And why is rapping an inappropriate goal but being a fiction writer is admirable? Isn't rap a more easily reachable occupation?
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
... [Y]ou’ve got to do your part... So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it."I expect"... I have no idea if expressions of expectation motivate children. Personally, I don't react well to a political leader telling me he expects something from me, but I'm not a kid.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.He ends with a double "God." I guess it's okay when Obama invokes the deity in school, but some kids might wonder why God's blessing comes at the end. After all, they were just told to take personal responsibility for themselves. And as for "God bless America," why is it even relevant? This wasn't a patriotic speech. The message to kids in other countries — including Indonesia — would be the same. Maybe some older kids will get it that it's just the conventional ending for a presidential speech, but if you're not familiar with the convention, and you're just trying to understand this speech, it's comes from nowhere.
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251 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 251 of 251the speech gives the impression that all school kids in america are black inner city potential gang bangers.
Well, because in Obama's mind those are the only ones who count. Everyone else can go pound sand.
This is why he devises his Health Care policy the way it is. To rob the benefits from those who don't deserve them and give them to those who do. Inner city poor non working people.
VE: STACKE stacking the deck.
AND, slightly off topic, why are so many ads for everything from colleges to car insurance to refi of homes now including phases like "President Obama wants you to.................."
I keep seeing the “president obama wants you to go back to school, but only if you’ve had children out of wedlock” add. It’s kind of annoying. Stupid behavior = Money for school!
President Obama is talking too much. A half-million words of public speech in 6 months? With that much "body of work", it becomes difficult to pick out what is memorable and important. Thus far one of his most memorable lines while president includes the words "police" and "stupidly". Not exactly "Four score...." or "We have nothing to fear..."
I love long speeches and classroom lectures--but only if they are going somewhere and do not ramble along.
If Obama wanted teachers to truly use his words as some sort of lesson to kids, then he needed to pick three big points and hit them hard and fast (5 minutes) -- this leaves enough time for the teacher to actually use the speech and reduces the material required for the student to comprehend and use within the upcoming lesson.
Brevity is the soul of wit and you always leave the audience wanting more. A 2500-word hodge-podge does neither.
Seven Machos,
You are correct that Obama's mother makes him an American citizen. What you forget is that the Democrats spent a fair bit of time stirring up the idea that being born to an American citizen wasn't enough, when it turned out that McCain, both of whose parents are American citizens, was born in the Panama Canal zone. After a couple weeks of toil and trouble, Obama "graciously" allowed that John McCain was eligible to compete with him for the Presidency.
So Obama has no one but himself to blame for the existence of the birthers. If his team hadn't de-stabilized the legitimacy of birthright citizenship, it would have never been an issue.
"Christopher": I was just trying to explain the rules of the game.
I find it highly amusing that an anonymous troll with no profile is trying to tell me what the "rules" of the "game" are. Try again, fool.
I guess this is what we can expect from Obama's policies; a one-size-fits-all type of solution that is inappropriate to a huge percentage of the people it is supposed to help.
bingo. I'm sorry, but you have to be just really, really dumb to make a speech this long and boring for kids.
The Obama administration seems to just sort of come up with a Big Idea, and to plough ahead with it. No common sense or regard to public reaction seems to come into consideration. Sorry for the cliche, but it really is as if they have blinders on.
Most of our liberal commenters seem not to even try to defend their idiocy. It's all about ridiculing or demonizing anyone who finds fault with it. Not that it takes much looking.
Excellent! A Capitalism tag!
Althouse, does this mean you are planning to blog about Capitalism more?
By Seven Machos definition, Winston Churchill could have been elected President. More importantly, Princess Stephanie with her broad knowledge of foreign affairs is not elminated from the pool of Presidental hopefuls.
Don't forget Princess Stephanie and her sister Caroline are hot and that sure beats looking at Nancy Pelosi or Michele or Hildebeast.
wv -promoshi = nepotism in Japan
Do kindergarters and first graders understand what a foreign country is?
Yes.
McCain, both of whose parents are American citizens
Congress later passed a law spelling out that such babies were US citizens, which cast McCain's status at the time of his birth into doubt.
Anyway, as far as I can find out, no left-wing kooks questioned McCain's "natural-born" status. As a member of George Wallace's party, MARKHAM ROBINSON, "in his capacity as Presidential Elector and Chairperson-Elect of the
American Independent Party," who sued to have McCain ruled ineligible, was no left-winger.
He's sending subliminal messages to our kids with that smile! Probably telling them all to join the giant commune farm he's secretly built under the White House! This man is evil. Drop out of school kids! Don't do anything this evil man says!
Read what this person had to say:
"There's a place for the president of the United States to talk to school children and encourage school children to stay in school."
"I also think it's also really important for everyone to respect the president of the United States."
"What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country," Obama will tell the students, according to a transcript released Monday by the White House. "What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future."
"We're polarized. ... A lot of people on the right, a lot of people on the left. We've seen that for the last eight years. ... We're still seeing it."
"He's tackled a lot to start with and that's made it difficult."
(Former first lady Laura Bush)
It's over it's over; our long national nightmare is over.
I'm going to the hardware store to buy a hammer and sickle to mount in front of the house.
I remember when President Eisenhower used to come on TV during the 50s. I was in grade school. I don’t remember what he was talking about, but I do remember that it was more than once on Wednesday night during the Disney Show and I hated him for it. I don’t know what these kids have to give up to listen to President Obama, but they might end up feeling the same about him.
The ISO will vote this week to adopt the GAU (Gettysberg Address Unit) as the international standard for measuring the length of speeches. "Too long have we struggled with speeches being called 'kind of long' or 'sort of short'". Now we will all know precisely how long a given speech is," said an ISO spokesperson.
Slow Joe, no one's made this about your bad or good guy-ness. How do you get to that?
"I noticed the part about J.K. Rowling and her 12 rejections as well. Anyone who has ever written professionally knows that number to be laughably low."
Seven -- 12 rejections probably seems like a lot to Obama.
Maguro -- I had to fill out a form when my Mom died. I guess her death wasn't automatic.
Slow Joe -- Are you really that upset that a politician may have colored a minor detail in his life that has nothing to do with policy?
That's kind of insane.
Why is it a problem if Princess Stephanie (whoever that is) or Winston Churchill run for president, provided they are eligible?
loaf wrote:
"No, I'm not a conservative. But I'm also not a left-winger. There are other places on the spectrum. I realize this is news to the silly political blogosphere (left and right). I thik the political blogosphere (left and right) is just two packs of lying propagandists and the whole promise of the blogosphere has been destroyed by such scummy people dominating it. Scum like Michelle Malkin and Jane Hamsher."
And yet you're out peddling stories about Sarah Palin, or at the very least spreading the narrative of the left.
"I take it from your post that you got angry at Charles Johnson because he was calling the "intelligent design" crowd what they are: Morons and liars. Well that's what they are. Truth hurts? "
I'm not MAD at Charles Johnson for writing about intelligent design, Im not INTERESTED in what he is writing about compared to what he's was writing about earlier. His focus has changed. He for some reason decided that he had to go after obscure people in the intelligent design crowd as if they are mainstream figures and then use those figures to condemn the right wing crowd. And this seemed to coincide exactly with obama being elected.And the extent to which he has changed his emphasis is pretty shocking. In fact I hadn't read his site in about a year then stumbled onto it again, and saw nothing but stuff about intelligent design and wondered if it was the same blogger.
"Charles Johnson is disgusted by the "intelligent design" crowd for similar reasons as he dislikes the Islamic fundamnetalists. He is consistant." Oh? Are intelligent designers chopping peoples heads off, waging attacks against our country and other foreign countries, and/or fighting us in Afghanistan/Iraq? No, so then they are not exactly fundamentally similar and his reaction to them and his focus on them as if they are similar strikes me as hyperbolic.
ZPS wrote:
"I find it highly amusing that an anonymous troll with no profile is trying to tell me what the 'rules' of the 'game' are. Try again, fool."
I'm not anonymous. Christopher is my real name which I've used consistently since I started commenting a few months ago. I access Althouse's comments through my Gmail account. I have no idea if I can set up a profile with it (and, frankly, no interest in finding out).
Am I a "troll"? You're high strung which makes it easy to push your buttons, but I'm pushing your buttons to make a larger point to you, one which is closely tied to your first comment in this thread.
Since you still don't get it, I'll spell it out for you: Ann posts about shit nobody really cares about, in turn, people write comments that nobody really cares about.
Most people actually seem to get this, they're here for fun and they know it. The genuine comment trolls, people like you and Jeremy and a few others, take this stuff seriously, like you're striking a blow for something or other by calling Ann on her posts or whatever.
That precious pearl of wisdom that you bestowed upon us, that Ann is providing comment fodder? No shit, sherlock. That's not some fascinating new idea that has never occured to anybody else here. We know that.
In fact, that's the "game" that I'm trying so patiently to explain to you.
Ouch, dude.
Seven - Maguro -- I had to fill out a form when my Mom died. I guess her death wasn't automatic.
Sorry, but you analogy is invalid. Citizenship, unlike death, is an administrative action conferred by governments and if you don't follow the rules, it doesn't happen.
Any child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is eligible for U.S. citizenship, but that doesn't necessarily mean every parent follows through, applies and obtains citizenship for their child before the age of 18. Winston Churchill and Princess Stephanie would be two examples of those who didn't and hence were never U.S. citizens.
The State Dept can go back and retroactively award citizenship even if the parents don't file before the child reached age 18; this often happens in special situations, like half-American soccer players who want to play for the U.S. national team.
I assume Obama was actually born in Hawaii per the announcement in the Honolulu paper, so it's all irrelevant to his case anyway.
So, can we impeach President Obama for ending his speech with a prayer. What happen to the seperation of Church and State? How dare he force his religious views on to me and my children.
/sarcasm off
I assume Obama was actually born in Hawaii per the announcement in the Honolulu paper, so it's all irrelevant to his case anyway.
It depends on what the birth announcement says.
I can put an announcement in my home town newspaper that my daughter gave birth to a bouncing 7lb 6oz boy and named him Barack Hussein Obama. It doesn't mean that my grandchild was born IN my home town or even in the same State or even in the same Country.
Many birth announcemnts in the local paper are just to inform your friends that a baby has arrived and generally don't give all the details like where or when or other pertinent information. My grandchild could have been born in Costa Rica,Canada, Kentucky or Kenya.
So unless the birth announcement specifies a place of birth....it means nothing that it was printed in Hawaii. I don't care enough to even google the birth announcement.
Maguro -- You are confusing the substantive with the procedural. If your biological mother is an American, you are substantively an American, at least for 18 years. The fact that you might have to fill out a form about it is just procedural bullshit.
The form itself is meaningless beyond bureaucratic confirmation of reality. The procedure confers nothing. The conference occurred when you were born.
KEN - "I don’t know what these kids have to give up to listen to President Obama, but they might end up feeling the same about him."
Yes, Kenny, the kids will all probably have nightmares and from this point on, hate all Presidents.
I mean, what kid wants their schooling to be interrupted by the President of the United States.
Duh.
I thought Obama's speech was fine and that he did a good job delivering it. My husband had the same reaction. (Note: Neither of us voted for Barack Obama and we disagree with most of his policy directions even more, if possible, than we thought we would.)
I watched it with my son, age 9 (fourth grade) who was home because I homeschool him. Neither of us had read the text of the speech in advance, and I had read no blogposts, including this one (we were traveling over the weekend and had just gotten home).
My son noted that it didn't seem 15 minutes long. He listened intently (not to be confused with worshipfully, something not in my son's makeup--must be hereditary), and we had a good conversation afterward, about the speech itself, other speeches of his and other politicians' we'd listened to over the past couple of years, and political rhetoric generally.
With regard to today's speech in particular, my son was most impressed by (in no particular order):
1) The story about Obama's mother teaching him at 4:30 a.m. before sending him to school.
2) The parts where Obama talked about messing up and also about "failing" as part of success.
3) The stories about the kid who'd been fighting brain cancer.
3) The part about taking responsiblity--that it's on YOU!--for your education and trying everything to find out what your talents are, and also how you need an education no matter what you want to do (the cop, etc. bit).
He also liked the part listing the responsibilities of parents and teachers, but primarily because his father and I assume both sets due to homeschooling, and he liked the idea of our having extra work since we make him work so hard. LOL.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the content of this speech, IMHO, and I thought it was delivered well with appropriate emphasis. I think we can't say these things enough to our students, and I think it's important that they hear it from many directions, not just from parents (though OBVIOUSLY I put a *very high* value on the role of parents in the education of their children, to put it mildly).
I'm with the miniscule number commenting here who think that those criticizing this speech are largely picking nits, which of course is their right. For my part, I'm glad the president gave this speech and glad I had my son watch it.
reader_iam - But wasn't your child upset over the schooling being interrupted?
Ken thinks appears to be traumatized by Ike.
Dust Bunny Queen said..."It depends on what the birth announcement says."
Why is it not surprising you're a birther?
And she probably put it in two papers, knowing that years later, her son would be running for President and that there would be morons doubting his birthright.
She also probably knew the Republican Governor of Hawaii and hospital staff would also verify he was indeed born in Hawaii.
It's a 40 some year old secret conspiracy...that, up until now...nobody ever cracked and spilled the beans.
Bunny, you get dumber every day.
Bunny - Birth Announcements:
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/obamabirth.php
Birth Certificate:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/06/obama-birth.html
Jeremy -- It was so pleasant to never see you here for so long. I assumed it was because Obama is faring so awfully, and you just didn't have the energy to harass any more.
Sad to have you back, and to see that you still can't quite make a point.
Seven Nachos Short - I made a couple of points, unlike the one on top of your little head.
Here's a suggestion: Suck my dick.
As an aside about early rising, I'm pondering the notion of the abuse of children on a mass scale in the history of our country. How DARED all those farm families, for example, get their kids up so dang early to do chores before heading off to school?
; )
Why is it not surprising you're a birther?
Hardly. I don't care enough to give a shit about this issue.
I'm merely pointing out that those who use a "birth announcement" in the newspaper as some sort of proof of anything are not choosing evidence of any substance. Birth announcements mean nothing.
The whole thing is really a non-issue.
Seven - Citizenship is a legal status granted by the state. It is, by definition, "procedural bullshit".
There are thousands, if not millions, of people out there with an American parent but not U.S. citizenship. Without the paperwork to back it up, the fact that mommy's an American doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Zachary Paul Sire said...
Obama might spend 15 minutes giving this speech, but how many minutes did you spend writing this blog post about it?
What's it like being on your knees, swaying in abject adoration at the thought that your glorious leader is addressing the next generation of one of your potential sexual interests, hmmm? Or are you just fantasizing that you could be suckling at the cockles of your beatific presidential divinity whenever he opens his mouth? Just bi-curious. Tee-hee.
Jeremy said...
Seven Nachos Short - I made a couple of points, unlike the one on top of your little head.
Here's a suggestion: Suck my dick.
One can't suck what one doesn't have. Oh wait, ZPS is jumping up and down with his hand in the air to get the chance. I defer to him.
"Christopher": The genuine comment trolls, people like you and Jeremy and a few others, take this stuff seriously, like you're striking a blow for something or other by calling Ann on her posts or whatever.
I've been commenting here for years, under my real name, with links to my personal blog and anything else you wanted to know about me. Also, I don't call Althouse "Ann." Fool.
And people want me to worry excessively about the sort of speech we heard today?
If you're serious about civics--as we are, having been teaching it to our son incrementally for years, now--handling speeches from politicians, including presidents, including this one, is no sweat, and it causes no worry. We have the solution at hand.
What causes *worry* is too-early exposure to the likes of the crap being so amply shoveled and demonstrated especially in the hind parts of this thread. Not because of a fear of free speech, of course. Not because that I worry about his tender brain being exposed to vastly different points of view and politics, or that he's a wilting violet, or that I would even consider tolerating, much less raising, such. But because, as I said, it's crap, delivered in crap terms, with a crap attitude, for crappy reasons having little to do with *reason.* You guys worry about who's sucking what, when, where and how. Me, I'll devote my focus and energy elsewhere.
I mean, really: Oh, puh-leeze.
vh: micerant
LOL! And the definition is obvious: What I just wrote (more's the pity).
ZPS wrote:
"I've been commenting here for years, under my real name, with links to my personal blog and anything else you wanted to know about me. Also, I don't call Althouse 'Ann.' Fool."
Years, huh?
I guess you're an awfully slow learner, then. I would've figured that a sharp tack like you would have picked up a thing or two about how to play internets in all that time, what with you running your own blog and all.
Y'know, reader, I'm beginning to think there're people in boiler rooms in unlikely places, reading all this, and dreaming up verification words.
Either that, or they've got software that's good enough to generate a tolerable comment thread on its own, which, given what you see, shouldn't be that hard.
So what about all that indoctrination stuff! What happened!?
The original White House lesson plan called for teachers to encourage children to write essays explaining how they could help the President, and for teachers to keep the essays for later evaluation.
The President's speech, as delivered, offered no opportunities for students to help the President.
Ergo, the speech that was actually delivered is not the one the lesson plans were drawn up for.
QED
"You are correct that Obama's mother makes him an American citizen."
Beating a dead horse.
Correct answer is not necessarily if said American mother was under 18 and child is born overseas.
My issue is whether his Indonesia step-father adopted him and he got scholarship $ for Occidental becausue he was a "foreign" student. Mmmm?
Not that this has anything to do with his speech today, except he can say anything he darn well pleases and the MSM is not going to question it, as they NEVER have asked any serious questions of their golden boy. Haven't seen MSM describing real issue with speech much as the usual suspects on this list generally don't get it.
They need some training in the classics to realize this is not a good thing and often leads to very bad endings.
Dear God, more bull crap.
Also, for the record,one of the great good things which inhabiting Althouse threads for all these years has birthed is the ability to parse almost anybody's comments bullcrap.
"ITA. His mother is from KANSAS! WTF does it matter where he was born?"
ITA = "in the ass"? (like, a form of "right on target"?)
that one evaded me completely, I'm guessing.
wv: "henov" - a new vodka liquor brought to you by the makers of Hennessy.
I once heard a congressman (Don Ritter, PA 15th) address a K-12 student body. We were gathered in the church we used for chapel services, and all the kids were on their best behavior. The Kindergarten kids behaved admirably, but their little faces showed a mix of boredom and discomfort after about 5 minutes. I'm pretty sure he went on longer than 15 minutes. It was painful.
This was the stupidest thing I have ever read. I know that sounds like an immature response to a post, that I should give more critical breakdown, but I am incredulous and can only say "this is the stupidest thing I have ever read."
Wow.
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