Wednesday
School Leadership, Social Justice, Teaching and LearningAddressing the nation’s schoolchildren: What is the real message?
Amidst all of the thoughtful conversations about the President’s recent address to the Nation’s schoolchildren, I have felt a strange sense of isolation and alienation. While folks are making cogent and important arguments about whether the speech went too far or not far enough, or whether parents are justified in demanding that their children be shielded from the potential indoctrination hiding in the dark corners of the speech, I find myself fighting a sense of rage that takes my thoughts away from the discussion at hand. Why rage? Because in spite of the intellectual interest I might have in these discussions, I am led to a deeper emotional dimension. I am anticipating the crushing disappointment and internalized powerlessness that may be experienced by brown and black skinned schoolchildren who saw in the election of Barack Obama a shining, liberatory moment in a history of oppression. I have other questions I would like answered.
What are these children thinking as they see their democratically elected symbol of hope and transformation scrutinized, vilified, publicly humiliated, and systematically disempowered? What can they be thinking when they see, as I did, a mother on television openly weeping because she feared that her children would be damaged by the words of a man intent on indoctrinating her children with ideas that fall short of her notion of ethical or moral integrity? What is the message being sent by another television clip of an enraged man intent on pulling his child out of school to shield the child from hateful propaganda being spread by this frightening man we call “President”?
What does it mean for children when someone in their own image is elected to the most powerful office in the land but is still not able to garner the admiration, respect and support of the Nation? What does it mean that even after making the impossible possible with the election of Barack Obama, that justice, mutual respect, and a sense of common good is once again eclipsed with politically-motivated tools of distrust and scorn?
I think that pondering the content of the speech and the appropriateness of the presidential address for schoolchildren is taking our eye off the ball. I think it is more important for us to understand how children and young adults who feel a strong sense of kinship with Mr. Obama will internalize the wrath directed at our President. Will they feel like they are not entitled to respect, that their voice does not deserve to be heard, or that hope is hollow?
Post Tags: hope, national address to schoolchidlren, Obama, racism, schoolchildren
Sep 17, 2009
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“What are these children thinking as they see their democratically elected symbol of hope and transformation scrutinized, vilified, publicly humiliated, and systematically disempowered?”
I actually think there is nothing wrong with this. Every president thoughout history has been humiliated and scrutinized, “ripped on”, by the opposite party. It happened with both Bush’s, and Clinton, and as far back as I can remember. I am glad that he is not immue simply becuase of race. It shows that we as a country look at him as president, for his policies, not as a Black man. If all of a sudden the other side just shut up there would be something wrong. The nature of our democracy is to have two parties, two ideas, two sides debating – and it isn’t always pretty.
Remember those mothers crying on television when Bush started the wars? When Clinton had his affairs and was not up to moral standards? You will always have a few people upset – and the media will always find them.
Sep 17, 2009
Reply
Clinton and Bush were both lambasted in the media and by opposing factions for issues that often involved a perceived breach of deeply held moral or ethical tenets….Neither Bush nor Clinton, however, were ever called a liar during a joint session of Congress and neither was ever censured from interaction with school children. I am not suggesting that Obama should be exempt from criticism and or public scrutiny. I absolutely agree that this is part and parcel of any healthy democracy and anyone running for the office of president, no matter their race, ethnicity or gender, does so knowing that it is a bruising experience at best. My concern is that he was portrayed by some as being dangerous to the minds of school children. The text of the speech was posted prior to its delivery with ample time for all to sift through its contents. This was not about debate in my mind, since there was really very little substance to actually debate….The speech was too timid for many of its listeners and utterly apolitical. If it was about debate, opposing parents and others could have used the speech content as the substance of that debate. This was really about censure, anger, and fear. What is missing in the media and among parents and their children in my view is a healthy, multilayered critical understanding of the entire event and its larger context.
One last thought….I do think that this is not a presidency like any other and that its symbolic meaning was aptly captured by the tears of joy and transformation of thousands of beautiful faces of many colors on election night in Chicago. The disrespect and incivility that often characterizes contemporary public discourse may indeed cause more hurt and pain in folks who have waited for generations for this moment and in whom hope may not come as easily as it does for the rest of us.
Sep 17, 2009
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George H.W. Bush was given the same treatment:
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.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/When-Bush-spoke-to-students-Democrats-investigated-held-hearings-57694347.html
Sep 17, 2009
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And George W. Bush was boo-ed during a State of the Union.