The President's Schoolyard Address
EDIT: So apparently this isn't an unprecidented event after all. According to the Washington Post, the first President Bush made a similar address. Strange that I don't remember it, I'd have been 11 at the time. (Then again, that was the period after the divorce where I was skipping school for weeks at a time, so that might have had something to do with it.)
*shrug* I don't think it really changes anything though. After all, I'd feel the same way if Reagan did it (though perhaps maybe just a little less since it would likely have been part of a legislative-branch-backed program. After all, "Just Say No" was Nancy Reagan's pet cause.) Bush-1 was no Reagan.
So I'm torn on this whole "President Obama is going to directly address our nation's schoolchildren" thing.
It's not really the speech itself that bothers me. The speech, according to the Department of Education, is going to be about taking responsibility for one's education, setting educational goals, and working on those educational goals. I don't have a problem with the subject matter at all, and yet I still feel uneasy about it.
I asked myself the following question, "If Ronald Reagan were delivering the same speech, would I still feel uneasy about this thing?"
Yes, honestly, I would.
For a while, I couldn't put my finger on why, outside of the emotional "this sort of thing happens in North Korea (or soviet Russia, or Nazi Germany, or what have you), not America" feeling. My biggest complaint with collegiate philosophy was the "captive audience" aspect of the scenario, exacerbated by the issue that if you disagreed with the professor, you would be punished for expressing that disagreement in any manner. You've got to take certain classes to graduate, and it's like you're paying for your own indoctrination. (A feeling I got to relive again thanks to the festering craphole of ideology that Cultural Anthropology has become since I last went to college a decade ago.) In these scenarios, you have ideas forced upon you which, for lack of a better expression, cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, and so you have to accept (or at least pay lip service to) them, or suffer the consequences of dissent.
Such a scenario is un-American, as it goes against free expression and the free exchange of ideas. As such, it survives in only two places: Cults, where the flow of information is tightly controlled, and the world of education, whereby your audience is largely captive (public education) or is attending specifically for the indoctrination (private/religious/what have you).
The DoE materials that originally accompanied the speech threw fuel on that particular fire. In the same link listed above is a couple of PDFs for "classroom activities" that center around the speech. I suppose there's been some sort of outcry in recent days, because the activities have been changed. The 7-12 activities have a discussion section, and the original questions were far more troubling. They were on the ilk of "What has President Obama inspired me to do?" and "How can I help the president?"
Egad. Imagine being the one kid who tries to say in that discussion, "I think the president is wrong."
Nevertheless, I thought I was overthinking it. After all, it's just one gawddamn speech on a partisan-neutral issue. For whatever reason, President Obama is popular with the schoolchildren, and by using that popularity to speak on educational responsibility, I must concede that in the overall balance between good and evil, between help and harm, this speech is a force for good.
And then I read this telling quote from the Superintendent of Schools in Tempe Elementary School District #3 in Arizona:
"I have directed principals to have students and teachers view the president's message on Tuesday," Superintendent of Schools Dr. Arthur Tate Jr. said in a statement Thursday. "In some cases, where technology will not permit access to the White House Web site, DVDs will be provided to classes on subsequent days. I am not permitting parents to opt out students from viewing the president's message, since this is a purely educational event."
o_o
Wow, seriously? YOU will not PERMIT PARENTS to make educational choices for THEIR children? Just who the fuck do you think you are, Superintendent Tate? Who the fuck do you think YOU WORK FOR?
._.
In a properly-functioning free society, that superintendent would not have a job after the next election cycle. But like so many in academia (and this goes both ways, *particularly* in religious schools), they know better than you do what's best for you and your children.
I don't know, I've had this nagging feeling ever since having to take my first Advanced Ethics course in college, and having Peter Singer's self-contradictory horseshit shoved down my throat for an entire semester. Perhaps this event is just bringing those feelings to the surface.
Feel free to comment if you share my uneasiness, or if you (wonderfully) dissent from it. As always, keep everything respectful, and remember my only real rule on this LJ: "Profanity is perfectly fine, but vulgarity is verboten."
*shrug* I don't think it really changes anything though. After all, I'd feel the same way if Reagan did it (though perhaps maybe just a little less since it would likely have been part of a legislative-branch-backed program. After all, "Just Say No" was Nancy Reagan's pet cause.) Bush-1 was no Reagan.
So I'm torn on this whole "President Obama is going to directly address our nation's schoolchildren" thing.
It's not really the speech itself that bothers me. The speech, according to the Department of Education, is going to be about taking responsibility for one's education, setting educational goals, and working on those educational goals. I don't have a problem with the subject matter at all, and yet I still feel uneasy about it.
I asked myself the following question, "If Ronald Reagan were delivering the same speech, would I still feel uneasy about this thing?"
Yes, honestly, I would.
For a while, I couldn't put my finger on why, outside of the emotional "this sort of thing happens in North Korea (or soviet Russia, or Nazi Germany, or what have you), not America" feeling. My biggest complaint with collegiate philosophy was the "captive audience" aspect of the scenario, exacerbated by the issue that if you disagreed with the professor, you would be punished for expressing that disagreement in any manner. You've got to take certain classes to graduate, and it's like you're paying for your own indoctrination. (A feeling I got to relive again thanks to the festering craphole of ideology that Cultural Anthropology has become since I last went to college a decade ago.) In these scenarios, you have ideas forced upon you which, for lack of a better expression, cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas, and so you have to accept (or at least pay lip service to) them, or suffer the consequences of dissent.
Such a scenario is un-American, as it goes against free expression and the free exchange of ideas. As such, it survives in only two places: Cults, where the flow of information is tightly controlled, and the world of education, whereby your audience is largely captive (public education) or is attending specifically for the indoctrination (private/religious/what have you).
The DoE materials that originally accompanied the speech threw fuel on that particular fire. In the same link listed above is a couple of PDFs for "classroom activities" that center around the speech. I suppose there's been some sort of outcry in recent days, because the activities have been changed. The 7-12 activities have a discussion section, and the original questions were far more troubling. They were on the ilk of "What has President Obama inspired me to do?" and "How can I help the president?"
Egad. Imagine being the one kid who tries to say in that discussion, "I think the president is wrong."
Nevertheless, I thought I was overthinking it. After all, it's just one gawddamn speech on a partisan-neutral issue. For whatever reason, President Obama is popular with the schoolchildren, and by using that popularity to speak on educational responsibility, I must concede that in the overall balance between good and evil, between help and harm, this speech is a force for good.
And then I read this telling quote from the Superintendent of Schools in Tempe Elementary School District #3 in Arizona:
"I have directed principals to have students and teachers view the president's message on Tuesday," Superintendent of Schools Dr. Arthur Tate Jr. said in a statement Thursday. "In some cases, where technology will not permit access to the White House Web site, DVDs will be provided to classes on subsequent days. I am not permitting parents to opt out students from viewing the president's message, since this is a purely educational event."
o_o
Wow, seriously? YOU will not PERMIT PARENTS to make educational choices for THEIR children? Just who the fuck do you think you are, Superintendent Tate? Who the fuck do you think YOU WORK FOR?
._.
In a properly-functioning free society, that superintendent would not have a job after the next election cycle. But like so many in academia (and this goes both ways, *particularly* in religious schools), they know better than you do what's best for you and your children.
I don't know, I've had this nagging feeling ever since having to take my first Advanced Ethics course in college, and having Peter Singer's self-contradictory horseshit shoved down my throat for an entire semester. Perhaps this event is just bringing those feelings to the surface.
Feel free to comment if you share my uneasiness, or if you (wonderfully) dissent from it. As always, keep everything respectful, and remember my only real rule on this LJ: "Profanity is perfectly fine, but vulgarity is verboten."