National hide-your-kid-from-Obama day?
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A lot has been made recently about an upcoming video broadcast by the President to millions of school children in order to talk about goals and the importance of education. Some conservative groups and conservative commentators have even gone so far as to push forward the idea of a national day to keep your kids out of school. It does seem silly to keep your kids from school just because they will see someone that you don’t agree with politically. It goes a little further than that though, many have openly talked about a fear of indoctrination, that their children might be taught new and powerful ideas that go against what they believe. It is fear that motivates this push towards hiding their children away from someone they don’t agree with. Fear of ideas that are different than their own.
Now, I will come out and say that I did vote for Obama and I don’t really disagree with most of what he says. But even when George W. Bush was president I was never afraid of hearing him speak, I was never afraid of myself or anyone else being indoctrinated with his ideas just by listening to him a few times. Hearing ideas isn’t bad, hearing new ways of looking at things won’t indoctrinate you into a new and scary way of thinking. If those parents had good ideas and had strong beliefs about those ideas then they should not fear opposing viewpoints. If their ideas are truly better, and they must believe that they are, then they should be able to rationally compare the two and arrive at the conclusion that theirs are better.
So why are they afraid? Is it that they don’t really know if their ideas are better? Are they afraid to find out that their views, and their entire political reality, is wrong? The only reason I can think of to hide yourself away and avoid hearing someone talk is that you aren’t really sure if your ideas are better. Conservatives tend to have an awful amount of fear when it comes to things they don’t agree with, the town hall meetings have shown us that, and the smaller the party shrinks, the more vocal and fearful the remaining base becomes. This drive to hide themselves and their children away from a speech on education and goals makes them look silly and will be counterproductive to their drive to return to political relevance.
4 Comments
E. Shrdlu
September 7th, 2009
at 5:54am
Good comment. Just read a letter to the editor from a woman who was going to keep her kid home. The ignorance of these people is frightening.
swordofdestiny
September 7th, 2009
at 2:07pm
Actually, a lot of what people are upset about is not the speech itself, but the things they’re going to have the kids do. “Write a letter about how you can help the president.” Also, since this is K-12, what about high school students who are against him politically, what are they going to “write about to help the president”? I may see if there’s a way to watch this tomorrow. What time is it supposed to happen?
YHWH_LIVES!
September 8th, 2009
at 7:40am
Stupid ignorant comments by the author! Barak Hussein Obama is DANGEROUS and you cannot see it!
Peter
September 9th, 2009
at 6:03am
My first reaction hearing it was “OK, so the President will address the students - I’d like to know what he’s going to say first, but not necessarily a huge deal other than taking time out of their regularly planned classes.” The initial (not final) draft of proposed curriculum around the speech gave me some pause with the whole “what can you do to help the President” portion, especially coming the day before he goes on to address Congress about health care. While I probably understood what was meant, I was a little less comfortable with the choice of words there and the timing. Still wanted to actually preview the speech.
I don’t know what they were thinking when writing the proposed study material. Just poor wording and poor timing there, but no huge problem with the concept of the speech or the speech itself. Personal preference, I’d rather it be done where parents and kids can view it together rather than while kids are in school, but that’s just because I think it’s important enough that parents work with their kids.
As to your whole “fear” thing, I think you were over the top there. It’s not about fear, but about disagreeing with the direction our country is going. Those who showed up at the Town Hall meetings weren’t afraid, they were concerned and wanted to voice their opinions. So they didn’t align with the Democratic Party’s goals - that’s part of life. Are Democrats afraid to hear people who disagree with them and their plan for health care or just indifferent? (After all, every single one of the people who showed up to disagree was a paid shill of [Rush, Hannity, RNC, ...], right?
)
Anyway, the timing and initial wording of the study guides were enough to make a lot of people pause and take notice. That was changed and the speech wasn’t a bad one - our district didn’t show it in school, but it’s available, and we’ll watch it during some down time as a family. Hoping that they can learn from this a little the next time and maybe have someone else proof-read what they plan to release before it gets out and we could avoid some of this mess.