Parents and lawmakers speak out against Obama's speech to students

[KSigkid]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Yep. This has been bizarre. I think it needed to be planned and thought out a little better before it was introduced since there hasn't been one since 1991.

It seems to me that we're at an intensely polarized point politically, so it wouldn't have been asking too much for the Obama administration to have reflected on the idea of how it would be perceived before they unveiled the plan for the speech AND to have worked more closely with the lesson planners at the DOE so the first set of lesson plans that the talk radio and TV personalities latched onto didn't contain anything that could seem like indoctrination through the schools.

On the other hand, this has been one of the worst topics for misinformation I've ever seen from the usual right wing suspects. The topic of the speech isn't controversial. There is no honorable opposition to the idea that kids should set goals and value their educational opportunities. It shouldn't be fundamentally threatening for the President to address school kids.

On final note as a teacher: the administration really needed to get the word out much earlier than they did. Almost any teacher could have worked some aspect of the speech into his or her curriculum had the teacher been given advanced notice. If you just publicize something the week before though, most teachers will have lessons planned already. Unless they can really justify dropping the instruction planned, you aren't going to get the participation you hope for.

Similarly, noon on the east coast as the time makes it pretty hard logistically for all the kids at any east coast school to watch it since it's going to be right in the middle of lunch, probably. At a small school where everyone eats at the same time, it's easy to move things around or even to have the kids watch while they eat. But anyplace big enough that they have multiple lunch periods, this is going to be really hard.

(And if the solution is to Tivo or record for broadcast later, why did it need to be during the school day anyway? Obama could have sent out tapes or video streaming to make available for teachers to use at their discretion.)

I think it would have been tough for the administration and DOE to really do any effective spin control prior to the speech, for some of the reasons you mentioned. Things are VERY polarized right now, and I think you would have heard many, if not most, of the same complaints no matter the amount of preperation.

The timing issue is a good point. In many schools you're going to miss at least 1/3 of the kids, and depending on the size of the school and the facilities, you might not even be able to get a television into the cafeteria. The smart thing would be to make free copies of the speech available on tape and DVD. They could even work it into some interactive research project on computers, depending on the actual text of the speech. I would hope the DOE and administration had planned for that.

I'll also agree that some of the comments from both sides have been pretty scary. The false information and stereotyping that has been coming from both parties is pretty crazy stuff. You see some of it here on Greekchat, I've seen a bunch on Facebook, and it just seems to blow up in places like the comments section of the cited story.