From Baseball Crank:
When I mentioned this speech to my wife, her immediate reaction was that Obama wasn’t looking at the calendar: the New York City schools, public and private, aren’t even in session yet the day after Labor Day. Obama’s effort to roll this into a massive PR blitz with the following day’s health care speech to a joint session of Congress will fail in my neck of the woods because nobody paid attention to the school calendar.
This is looking more and more like an ill-considered rush job. From my comments:
There’s a process for getting things into the school curriculum. So far as I can tell, the speech and the DOE supplied curriculum supplemental did not go through the normal process. That’s bad, bad, bad no matter what your politics. No doubt had it gone through the normal process somebody would have addressed the neutrality/balance issues before it got published on the Internet.
And then, of course, there’s the inevitable White House Back Step. Due, if I had to guess, to lots and lots of concerned parents and a few grouchy blogposts. Yea, us.
So why the rush? To coincide with the new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation initiative? Well, it’s not like they sprung this on the White House without much warning. Part of a media blitz? Two things argue against that: We’ve had a non-stop White House media blitz since Bill Clinton invented the Permanent Campaign; and it still doesn’t explain the rush.
The only two solid reasons I can think of are:
1. This Administration still hasn’t found its footing.
2. The White House is in Panic Mode.
Not sure which it is — maybe both? Not sure which is worse, either.
Labor Day is so late this year that it doesn’t surprise me nobody in the White House knew some school systems are still out. You’d think someone at the NEA would know, but maybe they weren’t consulted. Obama is for change, not details.
This is a bit of a problem, though, isn’t it? How is one to indoctrinate a captive audience if the audience isn’t captive? I blame the children.
Here’s the original letter from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan:
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html
This is another in a continuing series of blundered and rushed (and bad) ideas from this administration. No one should be surprised. Have they done anything right? Or smoothly? Hell have any of their big picture ideas been anything better than just plain bad?
We’ve had a non-stop White House media blitz since Bill Clinton invented the Permanent Campaign
The Bush administration can be considered a “non-stop media blitz” only in comparison to the Coolidge administration.
I don’t understand all the angst about the US Annenberg Challenge.
Oh, no, wait: I do understand. I just thought you might like a little more mixer in the bevvy, sir.
Dear Leader spend years working on education, yet he didn’t run as the education president, simply as the “hope & change” president.
Why throw away your one big policy experience issue?
My wife has been teaching for over a week and some schools in Mississippi have been in sesion for a month. Some areas have not started, and even more telling of a rush is that the speach starts at noon. My wife’s school searves lunch from 10:30 till after 12 noon (central time), with recess watched over by part time noon aids who are not allowed overtime. The speach will be right in the middle of this, that’s the ticket mess with recess see how popular you become.
hm… my boys have already been in school for 4 weeks… I’ve sent emails to the board of Ed stating that if they plan to show this nonsense, I’m taking my kids and any of their friends to Chucky Cheese that day… and it had better be an excused absence or they’re really going to hear from me…
No response from them yet…
Expanding on what #3 Steve said above, this administration has repeatedly shown itself not ready for prime time; from the appointees with tax issues, to the infamous “reset” button, and the idiot give to Britain’s PM, the functionaries Barry has in place are, well, screw-ups.
Let us remember Napoleon’s dictum: “Never ascribe to malice that which may be ascribed to stupidity.”
That’s it in a nutshell:
“big on talk – small on execution”.
Simon at Classical Values suggests that
You never ascribe to malice that which may be ascribed to malice and stupidity.
Knowing people as I do, I’ll say that’s the most accurate of those sayings.
The real shame here is that everybody, both supporter and critics, believe in their hearts that the President of the United States will use this speech to pitch a political agenda to school children.
Has the office been debased that much in a mere 7 months ?
Apparently, Neo. In fact, it’s a sad state of affairs where the most cynical possibility imaginable is also the only one that makes a lick of sense. What else can you say that about?
“New York City schools, public and private, aren’t even in session yet the day after Labor Day.”
I can’t speak for the private schools, but in the Los Angeles Unified School District (which is second only to the NYC school district) the first day of instruction is September 9th this year.
The speech probably won’t be any different from the other school stuff (lame, no one listening). The part that bothers me is the supposed questions about “why is what the Pres says important” “what is he asking us to do”. I don’t know if they actually planned to discuss them, but they sound really creepy and 1984ish.
My hypothesis is that Dunham, some time between the election and the inauguration, told the machine that he didn’t need them anymore; he was a big boy now — been elected POTUS and everything. Daley’s representative, surprisingly, just puffed on his cigar and remarked, “Sure, Barry, whatever you say”.
And now we see what they expected — the results of having an incompetent, uneducated, sffirmative-action baby trying to act as President. The cabal doesn’t really need him; if he hasn’t slunk back to the plantation by 2012, they’ll pick some other jumped-up wardheeler for the former Obama Girls to get moist over.
Akatsukami: wrong, racist, and senselessly offensive; please, let’s keep civil conversation.
As anyone over 40 knows, Obama got this from Reagan, who did worse.
Janus: hopelessly wrong, but as civil as one can hope (accusations of racism from you guys really don’t register any more). The outrage over this speech is a combination of an expectation that Obama’s partisan venom will be directed at the parents of some of these children, but even more so the cult of personality feel to the curriculum. Go ahead and defend the latter if you want – the Ed department has given up, though.
Reagan took questions at the end of his speech. Obama would wither if he had to face a bipartisan group of 6th graders for ten minutes.
Here in the Shenandoah Valley, Tuesday will be the 15th day of school for students.
Here’s a point no one seems to have mentioned: Apparently (I hadn’t bothered to ask) the speech is going to be delivered via the web, not cable TV, and my principal doesn’t think we have the bandwidth to handle it. We’ll be recording it for optional later use by teachers, after they’ve had a chance to see how useful it is. My county voted for McCain by a ratio of just over 70-30, so that may be partly to keep both groups of parents happy. Our students only get half an hour for lunch, in three shifts, so the timing may have had something to do with it, too.
Janus… how did you do with keeping a civil tone about anyone with an “R” behind their name in the last 30 years worth of elections? Your swipe at Ronald Reagan gives away your animus…
As far as what Akatsukami said, it’s true… he is the affirmative action President, ans he’s trying to Rule us like a Banana Republic dictator would… Go straight for the kids in a government run facility, making an end run around the parents. It’s a bad idea to let ANY politician get away with a stunt like this… and I am 40, and to the best of my recollection, Reagan never directly addressed children via mass media… His press conferences or addresses of any kind came in the evenings except in cases of emergency like the Challenger explosion.
Obama behaves like a despot… He may be President, but that doesn’t give him carte blanche to run the country singularly…