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Many people were outraged over the prospect of Barack Obama speaking directly to students at their schools, bypassing their parents. They forget that both George H.W. Bush and Reagan did it, as well. While I don’t agree with a president speaking directly to children without letting their parents in on the speech, I worry more about the complicity of our schools in the indoctrination process. Therein lies the difference between Obama and Bush/Reagan. The schools are handily picking up the slack for Obama, and are happily trying to indoctrinate our children. They feed them leftist propaganda, and then act shocked when parents are outraged.
Remember this video?
One Utah school decided that this was appropriate to show their students.
A school principal has apologized for showing a video at an assembly that a politically conservative group leader is calling “radical, leftist propaganda.”
Children at Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington were shown a short video called “I pledge” on Aug. 28. The video opens with an image of President Barack Obama and part of a speech in which he says, “Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.” The video then features celebrities making pledges about how they will help the president and the world — and that’s where some say the problem lies.
Many pledges, such as supporting local food banks, smiling more, and caring for the elderly are noncontroversial. But other pledges, such as “to never give anyone the finger when I’m driving again,” “to sell my obnoxious car and buy a hybrid” and to advance stem cell research cross the line, some say.
Other pledges that could be considered controversial included:
–reducing the use of plastic
–being more “green”
–not using the plastic bags at grocery stores
–only flushing after you poop, never after you pee, for the “environment”
–driving slower and not using as much gas
–being of service to Barack Obama
–and finally, “to be a servant to our president, and all mankind, because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek”.
Did that seem a little bit Marxist to anyone but me?
“Showing the video in a public school is completely inappropriate,” said Jennifer Cieslewicz, whose daughter is a first-grader at the school. “I don’t believe a video such as this that promotes certain values should be shown to elementary students, especially without parents being aware. ”
… Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges included, “I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama,” “I pledge allegiance to the funk, to the united funk of funkadelica,” and pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.
“It’s very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children,” Ruzicka said. “If parents want their children to learn about those things and do them in the home, wonderful, fine, but it’s not the place of the school to show a one-sided propaganda piece to children without parents knowing about it.”
Cieslewicz said such values should be decided in the home, not at school.
“They shouldn’t be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we’re in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle,” Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to “end slavery.”
Ruzicka said she contacted local media about the video after receiving complaints from several parents. Ruzicka said she worried the video’s messages would confuse children whose parents might choose to use plastic bags when shopping or who want their children to flush the toilet after every use. Also she said she didn’t like a pledge “to be of service to Barack Obama” as he is here to serve Americans, not the other way around.
Barack Obama doesn’t understand that he is a servant to Americans and not the other way around though, and nor do the majority of the politicians in Washington.
The principal’s defense was that she didn’t watch the video before screening it, and while it was shown to the students, she realized that she “shouldn’t have shown it”. I don’t buy that. I’m pretty sure she’s just desperately grasping at straws, trying to use the CYA strategy. It doesn’t matter, though. Even if she didn’t watch it, then clearly she didn’t do her job. What kind of a principal would show a video to their students without even watching it first? That’s just a disaster waiting to happen, as she found out here. Either way, she looks bad. This video is nothing more than propaganda garbage, and showing it to children at school should infuriate their parents. It brings to mind this quote by Lenin:
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Isn’t that pretty much what Obama and these schools are trying to do? Indoctrinate our children to grow up as liberal Marxists? I keep saying it, but it’s no wonder that homeschooling is on the rise.
Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin
Kevin M says: Anything…seriously, ANYTHING involving Hollywood celebrities makes my skin crawl.
With the sole exception of James Woods, I wouldn’t believe an actor if they told me I lived on Planet Earth.
Chris M-G says: While that video is completely inappropriate, having read the released version of Obama’s school speech I really can’t see anything blatantly political or wrong about it. My problem is this: “Do as I say, not as I do.” How many kids, after seeing this speech, will question the legitimacy of it if they know ANYTHING about the corruption that exists in his administration? If anything, it’ll turn them off to doing what he says. In this case, he’s shooting himself in the foot by doing something right for once.
WRG says: What, Exactly, have you got against an authority figure like the president urging kids not to drop out of school, and to study hard? Could it be that the more they study, the more they learn, the less likely they are to support conservative policies?
The White house published the text of the speech. Your argument that parents aren’t “in on the speech” is shot.
Having read the speech, your use of the word “indoctrination” implies you think education and personal responsibility are some form of conspiracy or crackpot ideas.
Right from your first paragraph, your arguments are invalid. Those who aren’t smart enough to see that need to go back to school. And at some point, you and your readers ought to experience shame for your inability to comprehend.
Darius says: The speech itself – as released – is innocuous.
What got people upset was the released lesson plan, which asked kids to read up on Obama’s life, to write letters to Obama on how they could help obama, etc.
For a prez already accused of cultivating a cult of personality, it was… tone deaf…. at the very least.
Norris Hall says: Hi Cassey
On November 14, 1988, President Reagan addressed and took questions from students from four area middle schools in the Old Executive Office Building. The speech was broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television Network fed the program “to schools nationwide on three different days.”
In his speech to students and the question and answer session following Reagan
1. stressed the importance of low taxes and free trade.
2. stressed the importance of religion in our nation.
3 touted the economic achievements of his administration ,
4.put in a plug for the line item veto,
5. told the students that lowering taxes increases revenue
6. boasted of his administrations aid to Negro colleges
7. and told students that if guns were banned, burglars would be “celebrating forevermore”
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/111488c.htm
Two years before that Reagan again spoke to the children of America on nationwide TV .
He spends the bulk of his address touting the wonderful accomplishments of his administration in fixing the economy, restoring America’s military, bolstering foreign policy. (Gee, isn’t it suppose to be about the kids??)
Then he goes on to exhort the students to help make America strong by
1. studying hard (good)
2. being good citizens (wonderful)
3. staying away from drugs. (excellent)
4. and lowering the tax rates (Huh???)
Why he just couldn’t help himself slip his political agenda in there again.
http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/51386d.htm
in Oct. 1991 HW Bush senior looked into the TV camera from a classroom
“Write me a letter — and I’m serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address.”
Astute observations Cassy. Here’s some recent education hijinks. When President Obama hired Clinton-era players, he didn’t just signal a failure to grasp the fundamental lesson of that administration: loss of trust. Take Barack Obama’s CIA director, “nice, quiet, civilized” Leon E. Panetta. Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff. California State University – Monterey Bay’s patron saint. And, founder of the Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Leon Panetta, who flew back to Monterey at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and announced to the CSU, “There has been a stalker in the White House. It was frightening.” Thanks to some rather adroit media manipulation, students heard only Panetta’s accusations, but learned nothing of Monica’s exculpatory blue dress from local KSBW TV News. Panetta controlled the school’s cable TV, from which even CNN disappeared. Fox News would never be an option. Panetta who, from his publicly-funded political institute opposed George W. Bush’s Homeland Security reorganization, and the detention of enemy combatants at Guantánamo Bay.
When Leon Panetta denounced the “Bush Doctrine” form his Panetta Institute, located squarely on the former US Army Fort Ord, where both his so-called “think tank CSU,” and his namesake institute are located, it was Memorial Day 2002. So, Panetta told the national television audience he was located in Salinas, Calif. instead. Conspicuously absent from the CSU bookstore, and its own well-stocked tax-funded oppression studies library: any textbook by a Caucasian author. (The text, Jihad vs. McWorld, by Clinton advisor Benjamin R. Barber, where tribalism and globalism collide, however was offered. The Green Movement adage: Think globally, act locally, best sums up the book, says Barber.) Panetta even used KSBW News to deflect Gary Condit’s detractors during the Chandra Levy disappearance. Remember Fox News commentator Barbara K. Olson? Flight 77 ring a bell? Perhaps not coincidentally, Panetta’s CSU opened its doors on 23 August: Italian anarchists Sacco & Vanzetti Memorial Day. Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis pardoned the Sicilians posthumously 23 August 1977, making Sacco & Vanzetti Day official. How the US Department of Education aided the Clintons in “building a community,” and how the Western Association of Schools and Colleges conspired to accredit the “experiment,” thus granting these Alinskyites a license to steal my tuition and your tax-dollars is yet another story.
Saul D. Alinsky was, among other things, a clotheshorse, who often donned a fedora. Louis Farrakhan always appears nattily attired. Al Capone’s official mug shot features “Big Al” in a three-piece suit. People tend to give Panetta a pass, if only because he wears a necktie. Interestingly, Panetta began his political career as a Republican. Panetta switched to the DNC because in his words, “They had a bigger tent.” Far from Illinois, Saul Alinsky passed away in 1972, in bucolic Carmel Valley, Sicilian Panetta’s fabled 17th congressional district. I first ran afoul of Panetta; while out trying to appease the radical professors, hate mongers and race baiters, he’d hired to inculcate Marxist philosophy into our daily lives. Personnel may be policy, but Panetta’s curriculum was straight out of Chicago. Anyway, the far-Left’s enforcer-in-chief would surreptitiously slip into my on-campus residence and replace my showerhead with a stingy water-conserving device. In like manner, my wall-mounted fire extinguisher vanished shortly thereafter. Gone without a trace. But “social justice” and “sustainability 101” were just getting under way at this full-blown criminal enterprise, and things were about to get worse. Much worse: http://theseedsof9-11.com
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