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

[DaemonSeid]

What's even worse, when reading some of the comments, it seems that some of the writers need to be in class with the kids.

[ThetaPrincess24]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

What's even worse, when reading some of the comments, it seems that some of the writers need to be in class with the kids.

lol yeah!

[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.)

[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.

[Sister Havana]

My old school district is not showing it at all, and that makes me very sad.

[UGAalum94]

As far as I know, states still set the number of days required. Most places, I think it is 180. Georgia and New Mexico, that I know of without any research, allow systems to modify the number of days as long as the number of hours remains the same, meaning a system could go to a four day week if additional instructional time was added to those four days.

(In Georgia this is new and was a response, I think, to the most recent budget crisis. A lot of money can be saved in transportation and facilities cost by shifting things around. Personally, I doubt it's a good idea instructionally, but when the money's not there, you have to do something.)

I suspect, but I'm not 100% that the nature of Carnegie Units as kind of a national high school credits measure has the effect of nationally controlling "seat time." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegi...d_Student_Hour)

But it's based on 120 hours. If you think about the variety of 50 minute class periods through block scheduling, there's still a pretty big variety in number of instructional days, even for offering 120 hours of high school class. Again, I think each state outlines what they will fund.

I think that regional differences are just a reflection of local standards/ expectations, so the reasons would vary by community. Georgia seems to have shifted earlier once the colleges all went to the semester system from the quarter system in the 1990s. I can't remember ever starting after Labor day, but we did used to start in late August rather than early August.

It's odd to me because I think we could save more in heating and air by shifting to September to June, and if you really had to, you could shift in-state colleges too.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by court4short

I was suprised to get a message from the school on our answering machine tonight informing parents of the speech, and stating that they could keep their kids home from school. They also mentioned they will be having a seperate classroom in the school where the speech won't be shown, and you can elect to have your kid go into that room.

Does that seem a LITTLE ridiculous or is it just me? It's a speech from the PRESIDENT of the United States. It's not like it's going to be some highly offensive speech or anything, right? You know, you can't hide your kids from EVERYTHING....I mean really, they are high school students. Just my opinion.

But going back to what I said about the speech not being offensive..I honestly don't really understand why people find this offensive. Am I missing something? Are there subliminal messages that I'm not picking up on?

Originally Posted by court4short

Just found this gem of a comment:

[ omitted quoted comment. . . .]

So many things wrong with this..the spelling kills me, but has this idiot never heard of a comma or apostrophe? Apparently not, but she still thinks she's smarter than the President of USA. Hmph.

I wasn't bothered by any errors in your comments, but when I quoted them to comment on your content, spell check sent a message about people in glass houses and stones.

I wasn't impressed by the intellectual nature of the comment you linked either, so I take your general point, but people, especially conservatives, being peculiar about what non-strictly academic stuff their kids are exposed to in school isn't really all that new or shocking to me.

I don't think the folks actually commenting negatively about Obama's speech reflect a big percentage of public school parents, even among GOP parents. I suspect that most parents regard the speech about on the level of anti-drug guest speakers or MADD assemblies before Prom: a nice idea but not likely to actually effect much change.

Originally Posted by KSigkid

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.

Originally Posted by Sister Havana

My old school district is not showing it at all, and that makes me very sad.

School districts can't win on this one unless they are profoundly red or blue. Remember that most districts rely on a lot of local support for funding and they don't need to alienate anyone, even for the high minded principle of allowing addresses from the President about the value of education.

Some parents don't automatically trust Obama delivering a message to their kids. Similarly, I suspect some parents would have objected to Bush delivering a message to their kids or their kids being required to watch one. Some who really value instructional time might even be in both groups.

The type of rhetoric about this has been creepy and appalling, but if you filter this by flipping the name of the President, you might find the possibility of objection for reasons other than complete political insanity more likely. The districts sort of have to live in that position.

ETA: I realized I wasn't really responding to you guys the whole way though my message, so if it seems like I'm accusing you of holding some belief you don't, please accept my apologizes for sloppy quoting.

[deepimpact2]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

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 agree that there is nothing fundamentally threatening about the topic of the President's speech. However I disagree about teachers needing that much advance notice. Part of being a good teacher is being flexible. There may be days when your lesson plan won't go according to "plan." A teacher should always be prepared for that. Furthermore, with the way things happen in schools nowadays teachers should be prepared for unannounced interruptions (fire drills, bomb drills, sudden visits from dignitaries). When Chief Justice Roberts interrupted my Torts class the professor was mildly taken aback but he wasn't going to tell Roberts he couldn't come in because he didn't have time to incorporate it into the lesson plan. And besides, based on the topic of the speech, what would be so difficult about incorporating it into a lesson plan?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by deepimpact2

I agree that there is nothing fundamentally threatening about the topic of the President's speech. However I disagree about teachers needing that much advance notice. Part of being a good teacher is being flexible. There may be days when your lesson plan won't go according to "plan." A teacher should always be prepared for that. Furthermore, with the way things happen in schools nowadays teachers should be prepared for unannounced interruptions (fire drills, bomb drills, sudden visits from dignitaries). When Chief Justice Roberts interrupted my Torts class the professor was mildly taken aback but he wasn't going to tell Roberts he couldn't come in because he didn't have time to incorporate it into the lesson plan. And besides, based on the topic of the speech, what would be so difficult about incorporating it into a lesson plan?

The difference is that Obama could have easily given more advance notice. It didn't need to sprung on people the week before.

And I don't know what your education was like, but a generic "stay in school, kids" wasn't part of my lessons very frequently.

There are a lot of ways the logistics could have been a lot better to get closer to 100% participation.

Think about it: if this had been well-planned and the specific content explained by the White House or DOE a month or two ago, there'd be pressure on districts to figure out how to show it. Instead, I suspect that the participation rate for any state that this isn't the first day of school will be far from 100%.

If this is the first day for a district, they had all last week to work out how and where they would show it. If it wasn't the first week, they were actually teaching, planning, grading, dealing with discipline, and probably didn't have as much time to devote to this. I know my district didn't. I think most of the districts around Atlanta figured out how to handle it in a way that didn't make parents mad; permission slip etc, but didn't send out any information about how to make it work with the lunch schedule or any of the practical concerns if a teacher wanted to show it. That will leave many teachers with the impression that it's much easier just not to fool with showing it.

[deepimpact2]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

The difference is that Obama could have easily given more advance notice. It didn't need to sprung on people the week before.

And I don't know what your education was like, but a generic "stay in school, kids" wasn't part of my lessons very frequently.

There are a lot of ways the logistics could have been a lot better to get closer to 100% participation.

Think about it: if this had been well-planned and the specific content explained by the White House or DOE a month or two ago, there'd be pressure on districts to figure out how to show it. Instead, I suspect that the participation rate for any state that this isn't the first day of school will be far from 100%.

If this is the first day for a district, they had all last week to work out how and where they would show it. If it wasn't the first week, they were actually teaching, planning, grading, dealing with discipline, and probably didn't have as much time to devote to this. I know my district didn't. I think most of the districts around Atlanta figured out how to handle it in a way that didn't make parents mad; permission slip etc, but didn't send out any information about how to make it work with the lunch schedule or any of the practical concerns if a teacher wanted to show it. That will leave many teachers with the impression that it's much easier just not to fool with showing it.

No, most teachers won't have a generic "stay in school" segment on their lesson plan. That still doesn't mean that it isn't relevant, and that it should not be addressed. I'm not sure why these districts are acting as though this is rocket science. When things came up like this in my district, it was never that difficult to plan it out. The lunch schedules were altered, and if necessary, there was extended homeroom. It is the POTUS giving an encouraging message for goodness sake! Seems to me like people would WANT kids to see that. All that other stuff about schedules and logistics? Just plain old excuses...and we all know what excuses are.

[court4short]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

What's even worse, when reading some of the comments, it seems that some of the writers need to be in class with the kids.

Just found this gem of a comment:

school is to learn not to listen to the president give a speech. i belive that it is not appropriate for this to be shown in schools. my daughter will not be watching this video. i do not send my daughter to school to watch videos all day long I SEND MY DAUGHTER TO SCHOOL TO LEARN. i belive as some others have stated that pre-k-5th grades should carry on with learning and not this pointless video. it should be the parents encouraging there kids NOT THE PRESIDENT. as one other quoted he isnt payng child support for our kids.( no...but he runs your government....) i feel as though president obama should get a brain and quit trying to tell our kids what to do. LET OUR KIDS MAKE UP THERE MINDS. LEAVE THE PARENTING OF OUR KIDS TO US. PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS TO WORRY ABOUT HIS OWN DAUGHTERS EDUCATION. PRESIDENT OBAMA OUR KIDS ARE WHO THEY CHOOSE TO BE NOT WHAT YOU MAKE THEM!

So many things wrong with this..the spelling kills me, but has this idiot never heard of a comma or apostrophe? Apparently not, but she still thinks she's smarter than the President of USA. Hmph.

[Jill1228]

Originally Posted by court4short

Just found this gem of a comment:


So many things wrong with this..the spelling kills me, but has this idiot never heard of a comma or apostrophe? Apparently not, but she still thinks she's smarter than the President of USA. Hmph.

yup, she should be sitting in the class with her kids, because someone failed her dumb behind! It could be worse...she could have committed horrible apostrophe abuse--you know, thinking the apostrophe makes stuff plural.

[deepimpact2]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

What's even worse, when reading some of the comments, it seems that some of the writers need to be in class with the kids.

lmao