I’m sure you have heard of Dear Leader Obama giv­ing a speech on Sep­tem­ber 8 directly to school chil­dren across the nation.  Les­son plans for teach­ers have been posted on the Depart­ment of Education’s web­site as well.

Here’s an excerpt from the PreK — 6^th Grade Les­son Plan:

As stu­dents lis­ten to the speech, they could think about the following:

• What is the Pres­i­dent try­ing to tell me? 
• What is the Pres­i­dent ask­ing me to do?
• What new ideas and actions is the Pres­i­dent chal­leng­ing me to think about?

Stu­dents can record impor­tant parts of the speech where the Pres­i­dent is ask­ing them to do some­thing. Stu­dents might think about:  What spe­cific job is he ask­ing me to do? Is he ask­ing any­thing of any­one else? Teach­ers? Prin­ci­pals? Par­ents? The Amer­i­can people?

Stu­dents can record any ques­tions they have while he is speak­ing and then dis­cuss them after the speech. Younger chil­dren may need to dic­tate their questions.

I’m on the fence on this.  I’d really like to see a tran­script of his speech so I could know exactly what he plans on telling these impres­sion­able kids.  If he talks about the impor­tance of a great edu­ca­tion or the impor­tance of being involved in civics, then fine.  I don’t really have a prob­lem with that.  However, I do think that this could be con­strued as polit­i­cal heavy-handing of edu­ca­tion — a place the fed­eral gov­ern­ment really has no man­date.  (I’m com­pletely against a fed­eral Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, since the States are sup­posed to be in charge of it.)   I just hope it’s not an attempt to indoc­tri­nate the youth of Amer­ica with the “Obama Doctrine”. 

What is so impor­tant that Obama has to address kids dur­ing school hours, and not dur­ing prime time when the par­ents can see it as well?  I remem­ber when I was in school dur­ing the Clin­ton years, we had a project to lis­ten to his “State of the Union” address and write a syn­op­sis of what he was say­ing.  That I have no prob­lem with.  This, how­ever, seems to be cross­ing a very fine line.

There is no clear encour­age­ment of dis­cussing oppos­ing views.  It only says that stu­dents can “share the ideas they recorded”.  Here’s another state­ment from the Les­son Plan, under the sec­tion enti­tled “Exten­sion of the Speech:  Teach­ers can extend learn­ing by hav­ing students…”

Write let­ters to them­selves about what they can do to help the pres­i­dent. These would be col­lected and redis­trib­uted at an appro­pri­ate later date by the teacher to make stu­dents account­able to their goals.

Here I ask:  Help the pres­i­dent do what??  I really want to know what it is he intends on ask­ing these youth.   Also, “make stu­dents account­able” to the goals?  How exactly will they be made accountable?

I think par­ents should take a very strong inter­est in this.  I think at least one should be in atten­dance at their kids’ school that day to watch the speech with them.  You bet­ter believe if I had a kid in school, I would be there.  This seems to be cross­ing a thresh­old into a realm that should be left to the par­ents only.

What do  you think?   Is this polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion by the Dear Leader, or is this an “inno­cent” les­son in civics?  Fire away in the comments.