Reflections On The Back To School Speech

Posted by Vulnadia on Sep 06, 2009 at 08:00 PM I find that there is NOTHING wrong with questioning our government or that of any other country for that matter! In fact, it really bothers me that we live in a society where people tend to just accept the government statements filtered through the media as facts without ever giving it a second thought! The same folks also tend to believe anything that they read in writing that comes from the media as well, never stopping to realize that information comes from people who are human who put their own ideals and opinions into their work and will also weed through information that they deem unimportant or erroneous before it ever even gets published! I teach my kids to question and to think about everything they see around them, especially the government! Thankfully, my eldest attends a school that supports and fosters this type of thinking. He actually ran into problems like that at other schools, where he was told what to think and fought it to no avail. It makes writing assignments very difficult when teacher refuses to let you have your opinions and only grade on presentation/grammar & form. Sure, this speech is great in theory, really it is and it sounds innocent enough at face value. But the projects that come with it (not to mention the timing) the group projects especially really bother me. The idea that my kid could get graded on this and then even have to share his project with another child who may or may not share his opinions and views personally is a bad idea in my book. Then I just look at the idea that, if a child stands up for his/her own views and they go against the speech in whatever way, then it can be considered TREASON. What sort of grade are we to expect? In this day and age of the homeland security issues, treason is a very bad word and can often lead to loss of rights: privacy, freedoms, you name it. Besides, children cannot vote and are not viewed as capable of free thought as taught to potential teachers therefor I feel that they should be exempt from this sort of outreach program put out by the government. Then, you can factor in peer pressure and the potential for discipline problems that will arise out of it. This type of label is often used and played as crutch, an excuse really, and a poor one at that! This speech has the potential to cause many problems just by being presented within the schools. In fact, this really is almost the exact same as allowing witnessing in the schools, which used to be commonplace once upon a time. It can and will most likely create uncomfortable situations and may even lead to fights among peers. I'm all for motivational speaking, in fact I think it's great in the correct context and venue. We have the State of the Union Addresses for that, and really, I don't recall any of them ever being delivered complete with lesson plans and extended projects for the viewer. Our children have to go thrghou enough daily without having to worry about how bad things are going to be for them in the school halls and on the playground after this speech!