URLs du Jour

2009-09-08

  • The local superintendent for Somersworth and Rollinsford (NH) public schools made the call to not show President Obama's speech to students during the school day. Some folks are upset:
    Daniuk argued that [Superintendent] Soule's decision to pull the plug was "partisan." She added that the address is "not a Democratic or Republican issue."
    Who is Ms. Daniuk, you might ask? It turns out she's pretty much the last person in the area you want to make an argument about this not being a partisan issue: she is the chairwoman of the Strafford County Democratic Committee.

  • Scott Ott has an (unfortunately) imaginary draft of President Obama's speech:
    A draft copy of President Barack Obama's planned September 8 address to America's public school children, tells students that "If you want to grow up to be like me, you should beg your parents to put you in private school, right now."

    Although Obama attended public school in Indonesia early in life, he soon switched to a private Catholic school, and from fifth grade through graduation went to a private college-prep school in Hawaii. His own daughters now attend a private school in Washington D.C..

    (Via Cato@Liberty.)

  • Neal McCluskey is not mollified by the (non-imaginary) released speech transcript. He makes a good point about the brouhaha generated by the speech:
    Ultimately, no matter what happens now that the speech has been published, one thing cannot be ignored or spun: When government controls education, wrenching political and social conflict is inevitable. Americans are very diverse - ideologically, ethnically, morally, religiously - but they all have to support a single system of government schools. As a result, they are constantly forced to fight to have their values and desires respected, and the losers inevitably have their liberty infringed. In this case, reasonable people who want their children to hear the President must fight it out with  equally reasonable people who do not want their children to watch the speech in school. It's a situation completely at odds with a free society, but as we have seen not just with the current conflict, but seemingly endless battles over history textbooks, the teaching of human origins, sex education, and on and on, it is inevitable when government runs the schools. Which is why the most important lesson to be learned from this presidential-address donnybrook is that Americans need educational freedom. We need universal school choice or crippling conflicts like this will keep on coming, liberty will continue to be compromised, and our society will be ripped farther and farther apart.

  • And Byron York notes the differing standards applied the last time a president tried to pull this stunt:

    The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

    Fortunate that we live in less partisan times! (Also via Cato@Liberty.)

  • And then there's the creepy self-importance. (Or, as Mickey says, the "unnattractive solipsism and egotism.")


Last Modified 2009-09-13 11:35 AM EDT