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

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Originally Posted by AGDee

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.

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...