President’s speech ripe for squabble among partisans

The extremes came, and passions boiled, when it was brought to light that President Obama plans to make a speech to America’s schoolchildren Tuesday.

The conservative radio talking heads jumped all over the event, calling it indoctrination and worse, referring to the speech as the way Hitler calmed his tribe into a course of hatred.

Comparing the president to Hitler, no matter what side of the fence you feed on, is flat nonsense. Anybody who does should be ashamed, if not in counseling.

Some radioheads called for parents to keep their children home Tuesday so they won’t have to experience the talk.

That’s not a bad idea, except it doesn’t give the parents much of a teaching point. The speech is supposedly online for parents to read. After they read it, they can make a reasonable decision about whether they want to hold their students out that day, or just have them excused for study hall or homeroom while the speech is aired.

Then they can discuss with their children why they made the decision they made.

Most Valley schools aren’t pressing the issue either way, and more to the point, many of the schools simply don’t have the technology to provide the speech live.

For those who see nothing wrong with the president speaking to schoolchildren in their classrooms might consider the feelings of the people discussed above. After all, access to what the president thinks and says isn’t exactly hard to find. And if he wanted to speak to the students, all he has to do is create a place on the presidential Web site where students and teachers can access the message at their leisure.

Put it online, Mr. President, and let the students and parents and teachers decide on their own time whether what you have to say is worth reading and teaching.

The president wants to encourage students to get serious about education. This from his press secretary Robert Gibbs:

“I think we’ve reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can’t tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school.”

See, that’s the irony here.

The students who might see the speech are in school like he wants them to be. The ones who need to hear it most, aren’t.

And there’s this: If the message is for students to work hard in school and attend regularly, why is he interrupting their school day to encourage them to do those things they are already doing?