Thursday, September 03, 2009
Schooldaze
Having just written a fairly hefty check to our township for the annual school tax (it is a real estate tax here), I guess I have at least some indirect skin in the game, but I basically agree with Ann Althouse's take on President Obama's speech to students next week. Holding your kids out of school that day (as Vodkapundit advises) seems a bit extreme, but I am not a parent with children in school. I can imagine that I would hold my kids out of school for a particular day if I thought that they might be in some sort of serious physical danger, perhaps because of a mold problem or a serious and very contagious illness present on campus. If I had fundamental issues with the academic program, I would look for another school.
Students are in school to learn to think critically, and parents and other family members should support that effort at home. Are kids truly at risk for some sort of political indoctrination on the K-12 campus? That is, if you are a parent with kids in school, is this something you worry about?
13 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Sep 03, 05:32:00 PM:
At risk from one day of Dear Leader Obama indoctrination?? The answer is YES. This is the way it begins. Just like the plague of drugs; it begins small. Why risk it.
This is a teachable moment.
Remember, Bill Ayers is waiting, if you do not make this stop.
By , at
Thu Sep 03, 05:41:00 PM:
Keep your kids out of school that day. Send a message.
With all that's going on how politically tone deaf is Obama to push this on the nation in a time of extreme polarization? Does he want to stir the pot?
By , at
Thu Sep 03, 05:43:00 PM:
This IS an issue, and for me as a parent with a 5th grader. I will not keep her out of school, but have started to share more of my thoughts (as my wife is as well) about this president, and the kind of people he's surrounded himself with.
She understands the basic concept: your government gets its money from taxes, and there's no such thing as free. Thus, Obama's push means Mom and Dad pay more. That's a shitty plan. She laughed when we told her that Bama didn't seem all that smart since it's so counter to the kind of garbage she hears at school.
By 
GreenmanTim, at
Thu Sep 03, 06:10:00 PM:
Sorry, this is absurd. My kids will learn more from the conversations I have with them afterward than any taint of ideas or political orientations I don't agree with that they pick up at school.
By , at
Thu Sep 03, 07:26:00 PM:
Is Obama so desperate to attach his name to anything, he hopes to be remembered as the first Prez to welcome kids to school?
By Buffoon, at
Thu Sep 03, 07:29:00 PM:
Yet again you provide levity (as do many others) to my usual knee jerk reaction to anything their president does. Good point and the child I have that will fall subject to this has already been "de-briefed."
That said, the concern remains of how this radical named Obama is utilizing a union to reach out and "touch" our children.
We should all be convinced that Obama WILL slip a group think message into whatever he says.
As ACE said, "the boy can't help himself."
Or as I suspect, the boy will follow orders. The megalomaniac he is, he still follows orders.
Apologies for the plug, but this is definitely NOT what our kids will be doing 9 Sept...
http://dequalss.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-your-children-will-not-be-doing-in.html
By Stephen, at
Thu Sep 03, 07:59:00 PM:
I'll send my kids to school, but do I trust Obama and the schools not to push a leftist agenda? No way. I'll talk with my kids afterward to let them know the president is not their parent and probably will be out of a job in a few years.
By , at
Thu Sep 03, 10:31:00 PM:
Is it something to worry about? Absolutely.
For just one example, one of my children has kept me up to date on their 'sex education' curriculum, where, "They pretty much say when you feel like doing it, go ahead! It's really cool!, and abstinence is mentioned with the teacher across the hall, in another room with the door closed, whispering."
I'm not an abstinence only adherent, but not hardly even mentioning abstinence, or at least reticence, as a potential approach to relationships and STD avoidance borders on the criminal.
And that's just one subject. The drumbeat of leftist groupthink in our educational system is pretty ubiquitous. The interesting thing is that many of the teachers that I meet are not that radical - it all seems to come from the administrations...
So, yeah, as a parent of children in school, I do worry about it, and for good reason.
By Simon Kenton, at
Thu Sep 03, 10:35:00 PM:
What creeped me out was the letters the kids were to write to themselves after the speech outlining as personal goals how they could help the president. The teachers were to collect these and use them later to 'help' the kids assess how they were doing at their task of helping Obama.
No it was not the Hitler Youth aspects of this. It was that the goals exercise could be disseminated nationally without the least premonition that anybody might possibly object. Eight months in and we're seeing a level of brainless insularity like the Nixon White House.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Sep 03, 10:36:00 PM:
My first thought about this whole thing (once I heard about the explicitly political preparation that has supposedly since been yanked) was that they're priming the electorate for 2010 and 2012. By 2012, kids who are 15 now will be 18.
It's an investment.
I'm not a cynic, I'm a realist.
By Donna B., at
Fri Sep 04, 12:51:00 AM:
It's creepy and I'd certainly be concerned if I still had school-age children.
It would be creepy no matter who the president is.
By , at
Fri Sep 04, 12:56:00 AM:
Maybe you should visit Asheville, NC were the teacher picks on the middle school kid because she said she was voting for McCain. Then the teacher proceeded to tell girl that McCain was going to keep her father (who she knew was serving in the military) for the next 100 years. The little girl started to cry.
Google it and then try to justify why I should trust the teachers regarding their government encouraged instruction.
By Patton, at
Fri Sep 04, 04:00:00 AM:
As much as these sorts of pseudo-sly indoctrination attempts irk me, they're not new - I've been listening to teacher-fed claptrap for all of my daughter's 9 years of public education.
And I long ago decided that the best thing to do was to listen to what she's been told or taught, discuss it when it's wrong-headed, and explain why.
So far, it seems to have worked, and in any event, it's the only choice a parent really has, absent a willingness to yank a kid out of school every time the politically correct wind blows.
