indoctrination my ass. Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama Back to School Event Arlington, Virginia September 8, 2009 The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today. I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning. I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning. Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year. Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility. I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn. I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide. Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team. And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it. And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy. We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country. Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork. I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in. So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse. But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country. Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right. But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying. Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America. Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez. I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall. And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college. Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter. Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it. I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try. That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying. No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals. And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country. The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other. So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country? Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America. (what a sad futile attempt to spin that into a socialism indoctrination. perhaps we are headed towards socialism. perhaps Obama is wrecking the country blah blah blah....... but: this speech is as innocent as a box of puppies. I'm glad my kids are going to hear it from the most powerful man on the planet.)
a couple of things, I actually don't think the republicans are winning the pr battle on this, this is truly a fringe crowd guided by a few fringe talk show hosts. even in this thread, most conservatives on this board agree this has crossed the line on protesting the president secondly my post is more about politics in general. conservatives are about maintaining the status quo. the healthcare debate is a prime example. as major pointed out in another thread, the whitehouse needs to change their message from 47MM are uninsured. the insured doesn't care about them. the insured feels these are lazy people or people who don't want to sacrifice to pay for insurance or etc. like major wrote, the whitehouse needs to adopt their message to why it benifits the other 250MM who have insurance. why this benefits the country in the long run. I see people on this board who say obama was given a mandate to implement health insurance. lets not forget the reason obama was elected because the previous republican admin was a disaster.
"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Landlord Landry again." Not to derail, but I've been too hard on you Landry. Apologies for that.
Unfortunately its moving from just the fringe crowd. I posted a few pages back that Governor Tim Pawlenty has criticized the Obama speech. Now keeping in mind that Pawlenty is gearing up for a presidential run and wants to shore up his support with the right wing but when someone who is usually politically savy like Pawlenty feels it is safe or that he has to comment on this then you know this issue has gotten some traction. While I agree this issue is totally silly and anyone with some sense should realize that its not going away. This is an example of what should be really a non-issue being magnified by people screaming about it. Rather than being nothing more than a news footnote about what some loonies are yelling about his week it has become a major topic of news and one that national politicians are weighing in on.
They are winning it in the sense that school districts are cancelling the speech and things like that. It's probably a relatively small minority of them, but it's at least past the "nobody cares about this fringe" level to the "it's obnoxious that we're talking about this so much" level. I think a lot of the GOP domination of message comes down to a few things: 1. They are very, very good at talking points. I don't mean this in a bad way - they are much better communicators of their message (the message itself is warped at times, but that's a different issue). Once they decided this was going to be a talking point, they effectively blanketed the airwaves with it. Dems don't do that well AT ALL. 2. It's easier to demonize than defend. Demonizing takes one sentence - defending takes several paragraphs to disprove. In theory, this one would flip when the GOP is in power. 3. Dems like to justify things on an intellectual level - especially Obama - while not appealing as much on an emotional level. It's odd, because this used to be reversed. When having a policy discussion, intellectual discussion is great. When trying to fight a public opinion battle, not so much. Obama used to be criticized so much for the hope/change/inspiration stuff that he seems to have gone overboard the other way since last fall. His speech on Wednesday needs to make the emotional case for health care rather than talking about technical stuff like insurance exchanges. (to clarify - when I speak of Dems and GOP here, I'm talking about the political leaders, not people on this board or in everyday life)
Wait, wingnuts(I say that to seperate the idiot screamers who happen to share many viewpoints most sane republicans do) are mad because Obama is asking the kids what they can do to help their country?? Isnt that something along the lines of what JFK said almost 5 decades ago??
I agree with all three of these things. specifically on point three, bill clinton was a master at communicating to the masses. however, I still believe when your message is it is american to oppose an issue, you're starting out from an advantage. that maybe goes back to your talking point issue, but is also easier when your position is easier to relate to american values.
Absolutely - I totally agree. Health care is the perfect example of that. Its easy for the majority to agree that "we need health reform", but the majority has to commit to an actual plan rather than a slogan. And when that happens, it's easy for the opposition to break it down and use the "American values" concept to knock it down - some people may not like gov't intrusion, so attack the public plan. Some may not like the cost, so attack the deficit/1-trillion figure. etc.
Exactly, how can anyone oppose a message from the president that advocated personal responsibility? I mean, thats been one of the biggest issues repubs have had with some of the democratic programs is that it takes responsibility off the individual and puts it on the government. Now the democratic president is actually agreeing that personal responsibility should be the number 1 priority and they are angry about it??
Yes, but many presidents transcend party affiliations and JFK was certainly one of them. Who knows, in 30 years perhaps Obama will be one too. I definately give him points for telling kids that they have a responsibility to themselves as well as the country to not quit.
Not only to not quit, but to excel. That is the part of this speech that I like. Bill Clinton spoke of it "taking a village." Obama has gotten it more accurately. It takes competent teachers, active parents, and kids that are motivated.
its difficult to break down these issues into why they benefit the public. people really don't understand how much companies are spending on insuring them. when people hear 17 percent of our economy is healthcare they don't understand why that's important. the dems are trying implement a plan (whatever they come up with) that starts benifiting people in the future. that's probably the biggest battle. the majority of americans have insurance, the majority aren't going bankrupt because of healthcare issues because the majority of americans don't have terminal illnesses or conditions that prevent them from being insured. so dems can run a bunch of stories out there about how other people who work hard who had insurance and who weren't covered like they thought and its ruining their economic livelyhood, people just don't care. contrast that to something we've been hearing all our lives, gov't spending is out of control. its just an uphill battle. lastly, these elected officials are only looking at getting elected, passing this legislation is a risk in the working class districts that can go either repub or dem.
You are so deluded! Please WAKE UP. 1. If you take the first letter of each word, what you find is... a big mess, but I am working on babelfish to find out which language he's using for his satanic, socialist message! 2. This isn't the REAL SPEECH he was going to give! If it wasn't for GLENN BECK'S PATRIOTISM, single-handedly making Obama accept a speech that GLENN WROTE for him, all our kids would be turning into communist zombies this week! Don't be so blind!
1. You should try playing it backwards. 2. If our kids are so easily swayed as to be turned into communist zombies from one speech, then we are screwed regardless of who the President is.
There's nothing in that speech that could be considered socialist. And this is the only thing that could even remotely be considered liberal: since environmentalism and poverty are typically liberal causes. But even that's a stretch.
The people making an issue out of this are not only idiots, they are the most unpatriotic Americans. They are putting their personal hate of Obama ahead of children. I mean, that's literally what they are consciously doing. It's very repulsive.
