Schools juggling Obama speech

Why are we afraid of education? Is it because when our kids have education they become better leaders in our society? Or is it a future president might be among them that can be affiliated with one party or another? Or is it because this is America the land of the free, hence we choose to have our kids fail and lag behind industrial nations?
The overblown debate about The President of the United States speaking directly to our kids is without merits. How could anyone truly debate or form an opinion regarding words he has not spoken or even read the transcript of his speech.
After reading the speech transcript on Monday (September 07, 2009), I was truly shocked about President Obama and his choice of words, shame on you Mr. President for telling our kids that education matter and how dare he tell our kids that each and every one of them has something to offer to his country.
I have to agree with North Gibson County Superintendents (Tom Miller) not podcasting the speech; the speech is full of political agendas which I will give examples of:
1) President talks about the important of education to our kids; he must be pushing
his education policy. OR encouraging them to stay in school?
2) President talks about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain
cancer but still overcoming it and now he is going to college, this is defiantly a push
for his health care reform. OR giving example of working hard no matter what
obstacle life throws at you?
3) Let’s not forget when President mentions Jazmin Perez from Roma Texas and not
speaking English but she worked hard to get education and will be Dr. Perez. This is
for sure a push towards immigration issues OR is it another example of working
hard to reach ones goal?

To our educators who fails to see that an important figure, a person that the majority (I would hope ALL is the answer) of our children know who he is, will be speaking directly to them and gives them encouraging words about the importance of education, should take this opportunity as a positive step and build on it. We should give thanks to Tom Shelton the superintendent from Daviess County who is taken this opportunity to build lesson plans around it. Tom Shelton is a true educator in my view.
I can think of few things I can do after the speech, how about encourage our school kids to “write” (this might be a new word for few educators) about their future goals OR have an exercise of asking the class to come up with different ways they think they can improve education and make learning FUN. How about send their input to the President after a healthy debate in class regarding his speech. At minimum our educators could talk about the different branches of the government and the importance of each branch after the speech.
To quote the President: “So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?” I think these questions are for all of us not just our kids.

Let us encourage our future generation to Dream Big and Work Hard to reach their dreams and goals while we support them along the way.