KSig
I don't know. I went to Catholic school my entire life. We had kids drop out and struggle all the time. I do understand what you mean though. However, like DaemonSeid said earlier that if you reach one child then it is a job well done and I agree.

I think you missed the "prodigy" part - obviously there are failures, dropouts, etc. at every socioeconomic and educational level, but I'm nearly 100% certain that the rates are lower for rich kids performing at a measurably high rate, and that Obama's message of effort, self-reliance and hope is intended to resonate with those who don't necessarily receive those messages currently.

That's a good thing. Coming from a ground-breaking political leader who carries cachet with young people, and who embodies some of these qualities through his very existence in office, I'm on board with the message, even if the implementation is bizarre.

I have read responses to the content that implied that the content would have been really different if there had not been so much controversy but since people got up in arms, they changed it <eye roll> Seriously?

From what my kids tell me about what they see/hear on Channel One, it's very liberal in it's content. I'm surprised there aren't more protests about Channel One, honestly.

My kids attend assemblies at school all the time without parental permission or an "opt out" option. One, in particular, my daughter experienced in 2nd grade. It was a teenager doing an anti-smoking assembly because this teenager had gotten throat cancer at age 8, supposedly due to his parents' second hand smoke. I was a smoker at the time but NEVER in the house and NEVER in the car with the kids. My daughter came home hysterical that she was going to get throat cancer and have to talk through a computerized box because I smoked. She totally missed the "second hand smoke" part of the message and only heard the "If your parents smoke, you will get throat cancer" part. Additionally, it's nearly impossible to positively determine what caused any cancer. I mean, obviously, your risk for lung cancer increases tremendously when you smoke. However, when I was a kid, all of the adults smoked everywhere and anywhere, including in the car with the windows up (and both mom and dad were smoking like that!). I don't know a single person who got throat cancer in elementary school because of it. That presentation seemed completely irresponsible to me.

ETA: The teachers for whom school starts tomorrow weren't scheduled to be at work until Friday. I don't think they had any time to prepare.

Because I read it? Although I have literally no idea what your second sentence means.

whey

For many parents, this issue in my area is how we have been treated regarding our children. Whenever there is any kind of speaker, presentation, guest, special activity, and so on parents must give their consent via written form. It does not matter what it is or who it is. This was not done in this case.

Then, each school did not have clear information regarding this speech. Parents want to know what is going on in their child's classroom and they have a right. The school board in my county did not have this properly done and too much conflicting information in each school. It should be the same countywide and this throws up another red flag. You can't do that to parents no matter who is making the speech. The way parents see it - you do it this time and who knows what else you will do it with. As a parent, you send your children off to school and you lose control of your child while they are away from you. Parents did deserve information ahead of time and specific details which they did not receive. Call it whatever you want, but it was poor.

I know that I received a telephone call from my principal and was told the speech to the children would be one hour long, but it is up to each teacher if they choose to show the full length or not show it all. Funny, the released speech was nowhere near sixty minutes. That tells me something is not quite right. Was my school improperly informed or was the speech changed after all the craziness? It has made numerous parents wonder.

If you are going to do something like this it needs to be done properly from the beginning and it needs to have everything spelled out for parents. No matter what the message it was done improperly.

Where's the original? I'd love to read it - go ahead and post it for me, and I'll respond.

Oh, also - where's the proof it was revised in a substantive fashion to prevent outcry?

If you have an original copy of the speech, I would love to read it too. Please post.

Again, I totally agree. First of all, Channel One definitely has content that I would expect some parents to find questionable. To my knowledge there has been no major outcry over the content of Channel One. It continues to be widely shown.

Second, I know that the school districts mean well in having assemblies where they talk about the dangers of smoking and such, but as you pointedout, often the students don't have to get permission from their parents to attend. Last year around prom time, the school had an assembly and invited the Life Flight trauma team from Duke to come and speak about car accidents on prom night. Of course they had a little video to go along with it. Needless to say, the students were traumatized and disturbed by the content of the video. Many of them started crying and remained upset for the remainder of the day. Still, at the outset no one required the students to get permission to attend, nor were the students given the choice to opt out of seeing it. Everyone had to attend.

With that being said, I still don't understand the uproar surrounding his speech. 1. Parents everywhere should be happy that anyone wants to try to encourage their children to stay in school. 2. It goes without saying that because of Obama's path to the White House, some kids may be more responsive to hearing such a messgae from him because it makes them feel as though if they work hard they can achieve anything in this country. 3. In the back of my mind, and in agreement with several other people I have talked to about this, I think it is a little less about partisanship and more about something else...

You mean the fact that he won the election means that no disagreement with his policies or position, even if only held by a relatively small but vocal segment of the population, could be rooted in "something else"?

Your logic does not resemble our earth logic.

I was proud of Laura Bush for standing up and supporting President Obama for this initiative. Encouraging kids to stay in school may just be that and not a political agenda to turn all kids into socialists.

TXCN was saying that many school districts in TX were not gonna show the president's speech for this exact reason. I call bullshit. The fact that it was gonna be shown in school, meant that it was gonna have some kind of educational value. These parents probably don't give a damn about anything else, but because it was from a president they don't like, or b/c Obama is a Republican (or whatever the reason) they throw a shit fit about it. I personally don't think the parents deserved anything more than the information the rest of the public got. From my understanding (and I have many relatives in education) the school districts got the info, so if the parents wanted the information, they should have asked the school district. If the parents didn't have adequate information it was because they weren't seeking it out, or the school/school district failed......not the fault of the President.

It's pretty ridiculous that the President can't even give a speech to school children about staying in school without people complaining about it. Was there this much uproar when Bush Sr. gave his education speech? Why couldn't people actually wait until he gave his speech and then if they didn't agree, then bitch about it? It's a whole lot of hoopla over nothing. Like when you are waiting in line for a ride, and you are having panic attacks b/c you don't know what to expect, and once you finish that ride, you realize there wasn't anything to panic about.

I mean i'm not the biggest Obama fan either, but geezus people, it's a speech about staying in school and getting an education. People need to take chill pills and bitch about things that actually warrant some kind of concern.


(FYI, this wasn't directed at you specifically baci. I was gonna post about what TXCN said, but you posted something similar before, so I just quoted you)

How could the parents have a "legit issue" if THEY never saw the speech?

The parents assumed it would be political because, well, political hacks always assume everything is political. The actual speech couldn't have been less political if it were entirely centered on the 2005 White Sox and their propensity to score nearly exclusively via the home run.

The Occam's Razor solution is that the parents' concerns were bred much more of fear-mongering and political hackery than from some sort of PTO feel-good hyper-involvement with their kids' educations.

This is also why baci's point holds so little water - all the sudden, this is the precise moment when a sea of (ONLY REPUBLICAN) parents become overwhelmingly involved with schooling? Really? It's cognitive dissonance at its finest, and I have absolutely no qualms saying that.

So, even though can't produce the original copy, you just assumed that the general message of the speech was revised, and we should believe you because you say so? You completely contradicted yourself.

Just because someone believes that somethings exists, isn't proof that it actually exists until you can produce it. Thus, no reason to really be upset.

why bother with this fellow?

On the other hand...look at it like this, in a twisted way, this is probably the most involved that some of these parents have been in thier schools in a long, long time. Heh!!!!