The President's Speech

This is a hopefully "better late than never" post on the President's speech to the nation's schoolchildren on Tuesday. Calvert 10th Agers saw the speech live, and many of our Middle Schoolers saw it later it in the afternoon. The White House was smart to release the text of the speech a day early, but it was sad, in my opinion, that they had to do so. The critics of the speech missed a key point: even if the speech did deliver a partisan message--which it did not--it would have been a great learning opportunity for our students and students across the country! In fact, one might argue that students could have learned more from a partisan speech (regardless of the party) than from a middle of the road speech. The post-speech discussions in class would have been much richer. It is important for students to understand politics, to analyze what politicians (and authors, other speakers, etc) say or write, and to digest that information and then make an informed opinion about what they themselves believe. This is obviously a process and cannot be fully achieved when a child is 10 or 11, but we can start that education now.