In an acknowledgment that the Department of Education provided lesson plans written somewhat inartfully, surrounding the President Obama’s speech to students next Tuesday, the White House today announced that it had rewritten one of the sections in question.
President Obama will talk to students from Pre K thru 12th grade about personal responsibility and the importance of staying in school, White House aides said.
I think Jakes is giving the White House the benefit of the doubt that it hasn’t quite earned. Here’s why I say that. You can see the changes in the lesson plan in this Jim Geraghty post.
Let’s assume that the White House is right and all the President really wanted to talk about is staying in school and having good education goals. How, then, was the original language supposed to work? Remember that the second half of the plan was for teachers to hold the letters their students write then give them back to the students at “an appropriate later date…to make students accountable to their goals”. But what later date would be appropriate for a long-term goal?
Unless school has changed quite a bit, students only get a teacher for one year, which means that any long-term educational goal would have to be accomplished by the end of the year? A year is not exactly “long-term”.
On the other hand, that instruction would work perfectly if the goal of the letters was for students to pledge to “help the president”. His goals aren’t long-term. Most of them are measured in weeks or months. It makes perfect sense for teachers to whip these letters out in, say, April and ask kids how much President-helping they’ve done.
The White House explanation doesn’t hold water either.
“We changed it to clarify the language so the intent is clear,” said White House Spokesman Tommy Vietor.
The idea, Vietor said, was that students should think of how they could help the President in terms of reducing the national dropout rate.
The intent was pretty clear the first time around. The new language didn’t clear up the intent; it established a brand new intent.
There isn’t a darned thing a school kid, especially kids in elementary and junior high school can to do help reduce the dropout rate in the short or long terms. There are ways kids can help the President shove through government-run health care and cap and trade, though.
It looks to me like the President tried to slick one past us and, when he got busted, his people made up a BS story. School attendance and paying attention in class might be the aim of his speech now but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts there was a lot more of the hard-sell “I pledge” stuff this in it two days ago. It’s a shame that Tapper didn’t press the White House harder on the matter instead of swallowing the lines he was fed.
Tags: Education, President Barack Obama
The worst thing about betrayal is that those most deeply in love are the last to know…
concider the president’s stand on
*gay rights
*indeterminate detention without charges,
*Afganistan militarization…still no Osama as promised,
*CIA
*Black Panther prosecutions
stayed tuned kool aide drinkers more 180s to come…
[...] only guessing) – if he did, why would he even allow those precious little ears to hear O’Suavey’s dulcet tones of [...]
“There isn’t a darned thing a school kid, especially kids in elementary and junior high school can to do help reduce the dropout rate in the short or long terms.”
Really? How about not dropping out? That would help the dropout rate. That you don’t believe that kids dropping out are the cause of the dropout rate is astonishing. But I have to say this protest is a good thing. For all of my life, Republicans have been opposed to the very idea of educating people. But they’ve always been afraid to say it clearly. Now, they are speaking their true beliefs. They believe that children should not be educated, and they are saying it loud and clear now. I hope everyone is listening. And while you’re at it, don’t just take your kids out of school for that day, take them out forever. I shouldn’t have to pay for the education of people who are morally opposed to learning. You guys can believe the Earth is flat and the Sun revolves around it. You guys can believe it’s only 6,000 years old. You can believe that pi is 22/7 and a rational number. You can deny all the scientific progress made over the last five centuries. Do it, I don’t care. If you want to remain stupid, it’s not my problem.
Seriously fostert, the way you regularly misstate conservative positions calls your own reading comprehension into question. I don’t think I’d be talking about how uneducated others are if I were you. You’re embarrassing yourself.