AJ DiCintio

Obama’s Shameful Education Affair
September 4, 2009

It’s safe to say political analyst Norman Ornstein doesn’t agree that President Obama’s K-12 educational happening is shameful in every sense of the term, which includes its being offensive and downright indecent.

After all, according to the Washington Times, Ornstein sees only "a standard issue speech by a president, with a good, common sense, even conservative message about education, school, hard work and perseverance.”

Moreover, he finds criticism of the speech an indicator of "how dysfunctional our politics are” and condemns critics as people who are "blinded from common sense by their visceral hatred for Obama and his side of the aisle.”

Of course, it won’t affect the American left’s view of Obama’s critics as a mob of racist, swastika waving, Know-Nothing, artificial turf loving slobs; but the case against the affair deserves to be made.

To make the case, we need simply consider its "Menu of Classroom Activities” designed for administrators, teachers, and students.

Now, as the Washington Times reports, President George H.W. Bush didn’t order up such a menu when he spoke to the nation’s students in ’91. Yet, without a word of thoughtful analysis about an unconscionable attempt to place the spotlight on the president and not on ideas (a tactic on which the White House has already pulled back somewhat), Ornstein speaks of an innocent "standard issue.”

(Who just might be the mad, fawning, true-believing ideologue here?)

So, let’s do what real education teaches us to do and carefully examine the Menu’s text.

Goodness, gracious! What do we find even before we get to "September 8, 2009,” except the perversion of language politicians call an "oversight” but the rest of us call "another damned lie of omission.”

We read, "Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education.”

But here’s the whole truth as exposed by the Washington Times:

The idea of adding a lesson plan to the package of materials being sent to schoolteachers was hatched during meetings between the White House and officials from the Department of Education.

The lessons themselves were developed by educators, White House officials said. But some of the assignments, they later conceded, may appear to be inartfully worded without also knowing the context of the speech.

"Inartfully worded.” What a perfect example of gobbledygook employed to cover up the fact that White House political operatives couldn’t honestly say this:

"We want to make sure students come away from this speech with the image of Barack Obama as their personal Educational Savior.”

An unwarranted conclusion? Then, consider this:

The "Before” segment of the "PreK-6” section contains seven questions teachers can ask students to build "background knowledge about the President of the United States and his speech.”

Six of the questions contain a direct reference to the president with a total of nine specific references to him throughout the segment, insuring that at all times information given to students and responses elicited from them are associated with President Barack Obama.

Similarly, the "Guided Discussion” segment of the 7-12 "After the Speech” section contains nine mentions of or references to the president, again keeping him at the Center of All Things, even to the extent of asking students to place themselves in the Mind of Obama:

Suppose President Obama were to give another speech about being educationally successful. To whom would he speak? Why? What would the president say?

"What would Barack Obama say?”

Well, pardon me; but if I were asked to develop a "Menu” to get students thinking about the importance of education, learning, achievement, responsibility, and individuality, I wouldn’t care a whit about what an ordinary politician has to say — much less one who was incubated, hatched, and fattened in a repulsively malodorous coop over whose door reads, "Chicago Political Machine.”

I’d invoke, in as simple language as possible, ideas bequeathed to humanity by the greatest figures in religion, the arts, and philosophy.

Furthermore, I’d make sure to ask students to think about what kind of mothers and fathers they ought to become so that they can give their children the opportunity to develop to their full potential as human beings.

And as far as offering students some thoughts about responsibility and individuality, I’d ask them to think about and discuss a few quotes from those quintessential American thinkers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

About what counts in life, Emerson observed,

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

About being an individual, he said this:

These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day.

Thoreau, too, always recognized the existence of a higher purpose in human life:

Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour...but whether we should live like baboons or like men is a little uncertain.