mheslep said:
I see nuttiness in different places. In 2009 we have the odd soccer mom that may or may not have kept her kid home (about the lesson plan, not the speech), but nobody in the opposition with any power doing anything to anybody. In sum, nothing is going to happen except tongue wagging. In 1991 we had elected representatives actually using power to attack the '91 administration over Bush's school speech. They called the Education secretary to testify. They started up the inspectors office to eat time and money going through files. Now frankly, I see all the '91 stuff as the same ol' politics, though restraint should have been shown. What I find truly odd given the above, are those opinions that somehow still imagine that Democratic ranks are staffed only by the truly enlightened and rational, and that the other side is nuts.
You claim to be seeing opinions somewhere that correspond to
"imagine that Democratic ranks are staffed only by the truly enlightened and rational, and that the other side is nuts". That's unhelpful hyperbole. There are obviously some differences of opinion, but it doesn't help to just phrase views you disagree with in such over the top terms.
What you say about the '91 stuff being the "same old politics" sounds about right to me. I tried to find out a bit more about it, and the 1991 objections sound like self serving grandstanding, which wasted time and money with hearings and inspections that came to nothing, over what (in my opinion) should have been a cause for bipartisan support. I agree with your reaction to this.
In 2009, many people just don't like Mr Obama and don't want him to have any input to schools at all. The focus on the lesson plan is a bit more reasonable... but not much. It's not really a lesson plan; just a list of possible activities teacher might consider for including in their lesson plans. Many criticisms of these classroom materials have been as over the top as everything else. It's not everyone who is objecting, and not all republicans either. I'm not trying to smear all of one side with an issue, but looking at the issue itself regardless of who and how many think there's a problem.
The specifics of objections to the provided classroom materials don't make any sense. The big issue has apparently been that it involved students writing letters to help the president. Here's a link to the http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/lessons/prek-6.pdf, from the Department of Education. For comparison, here's
a previous version someone has made available.
There are a number of minor changes that I will ignore. These include things like replacing "can" with "could", or "President" with "president", breaking sentences, adding commas, and making minor word replacements or rearrangements.
There is a deletion of one possible activity, involving making a video (see related
contest website), which was originally as follows:
Teachers could encourage students to participate in the Department of Education video contest. On September 8th the Department will invite K-12 students to submit a video no longer than 2 min, explaining why education is important and how their education will help them achieve their dreams. Teachers are welcome to incorporate the same or a similar video project into an assignment. More details will be released via
www.ed.gov.[/color]
The only other significant change was to replace
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.[/color]
with
Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. Teachers would collect and redistribute these letters at an appropriate later date to enable students to monitor their progress.[/color]
Frankly, I think the original letter idea was much better, and that objections to "helping the president" have been ridiculous. And -- ironically perhaps -- this activity echoes a similar idea expressed explicitly by President Bush in 1991, in his
national address to students!
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.[/color]
This was a good idea when Bush gave it in 1991, and it was a good idea when included in the classroom activities in 2009. It's positive, it encourages good civic activity, and it does not require or imply in any way that you have to agree with the president about everything. The objections to the classroom activities as they were originally proposed are absurd.
Cheers -- sylas
