The prepared text of President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address scheduled for Tuesdays, as released in advance by the White House:
 
Hello, everyone — how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through 12th grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.
 
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday — at 4:30 in the morning.
 
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”
 
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.
 
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.
 
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.
 
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.
 
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.
 
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.
 
Maybe you could be a good writer — maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper — but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor — maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine — but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a senator or a Supreme Court justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.
 
And no matter what you want to do with your life — I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
 
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
 
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
 
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.
 
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
 
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
 
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our first lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
 
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
 
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life — what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home — that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.
 
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
 
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
 
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
 
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer — hundreds of extra hours — to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
 
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
 
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same. That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education — and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
 
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
 
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
 
That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
 
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you — you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
 
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.
 
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust — a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor — and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.
 
And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you — don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
 
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best. It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
 
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?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down — don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
 
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

By Mark Steyn

On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama’s plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: “Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.”

Oh, dear! “A Canadian author”: Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don’t know what’s crueler, the “Canadian” or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that’s one way of putting it. Here’s what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim: “Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.”

Close enough for Times work.

But, if the Times wants to play this game, bring it on. The Omnipresent Leader has traditionally been a characteristic feature of Third World basket-case dumps: The conflation of the man and the state is explicit, and ubiquitous. In 2003, motoring around western Iraq a few weeks after the regime’s fall, when the schoolhouses were hastily taking down the huge portraits of Saddam that had hung on every classroom wall, I visited an elementary-school principal with a huge stack of suddenly empty picture frames piled up on his desk, and nothing to put in them. The education system’s standard first-grade reader featured a couple of kids called Hassan and Amal — a kind of Iraqi Dick and Jane — proudly holding up their portraits of the great man and explaining the benefits of an Iraqi education:

“O come, Hassan,” says Amal. “Let us chant for the homeland and use our pens to write, ‘Our beloved Saddam.’”

“I come, Amal,” says Hassan. “I come in a hurry to chant, ‘O, Saddam, our courageous president, we are all soldiers defending the borders for you, carrying weapons and marching to success.’”

Pathetic, right?

On Friday, August 28, the principal of Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington, Utah — in the name of “education” — showed her young charges the “Obama Pledge” video released at the time of the inauguration, in which Ashton Kutcher and various other bigtime celebrities, two or three of whom you might even recognize, “pledge to be a servant to our president and to all mankind because together we can, together we are, and together we will be the change that we seek.”

Altogether now! Let us chant for mankind and use our pens to write, “O beloved Obama, our courageous president, we are all servants defending the hope for you and marching to change.”

And, unlike Saddam’s Iraq, we don’t have the mitigating condition of being a one-man psycho state invented by the British Colonial Office after lunch on a wet afternoon in 1922.

Any self-respecting schoolkid, enjoined by his principal to be a “servant” to the head of state, would reply, “Get lost, creep.” And, if they still taught history in American schools, he’d add, “Oh, and by the way, that question was settled in 1776.”

To accompany President Obama’s classroom speech this week, the White House and America’s “educators” drafted some accompanying study materials. Children would be invited to write letters to themselves saying what they could do to “help the President.”

My suggestion: “Not tell people what I really think about his lousy health-care plan.”

Well, after the unwelcome media attention, that exercise was hastily dropped.

For the rest of us, the president does not yet require a written test from grown-ups after his speeches, but it’s surely only a matter of time. The New York Times managed to miss my point: Far from “accusing” the president of “trying to create a cult of personality,” I spent much of my airtime on Rush’s show last week “accusing” the president of doing an amazing job of finishing off his own cult of personality in record time. Obama’s given 111 speeches, interviews, and press conferences in which he’s talked about health care, and the more he opens his mouth the more the American people recoil from his “reforms.” Now he’s giving a 112th — to a joint session of Congress — and this one, we’re assured, will finally do the trick. That brand new Chevy may be rusting and up on bricks by the time he seals the deal, but America’s Auto Salesman-in-Chief will get you to sign in the end.

The president has made the mistake of believing his own publicity — or, at any rate, his own mainstream-media coverage, which is pretty much the same thing. They told him he was the greatest orator since Socrates, but, alas, even Socrates would have difficulty playing six sets a night every Open Mike Night at the Soaring Rhetoric Lounge out on Route 127. Even Ashton Kutcher’s charms would wane by the 112th speech.
 
“Mr. Obama,” wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, “has grown boring.” Amazing but true. He’s a crashing bore, and he’s become one in nothing flat. His approval ratings have slumped — not just among Republicans, not just among independents, not just among seniors, who are after all first in line for the death panels. But they’ve fallen among young people — the starry-eyed members of the Hopeychangey Generation who stared into the mesmerizing giant “O” of his logo and saw the new Otopia. According to the latest Zogby poll, Obama’s hold on the young is a wash: 41 percent approve, 41 percent disapprove. Zogby defines “young” as under 30, so maybe the kindergartners corralled into his audience this week will still be on side, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The president’s strategy on January 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall — stimulus, auto nationalization, cap’n’trade, health care — and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren’t finding it quite so charismatic, and they’re beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting prosperity-throttling future-beggaring big-government policies.

No wonder the poor chap’s running out of material. At the time of writing, one of his exercises for America’s schoolchildren is to suggest what you’d like him to do in his next speech. Here’s mine: Call in sick, sir. You’ll be doing your presidency a favor.

The president is not our ruler but our representative, a citizen-executive drawn from the people. It is unbecoming to a self-governing republic to require schoolchildren to (to cite another test question) select the three most important words in the president’s speech.

But, if we have to trudge down this grim road, go on, kid, I dare you: “That’s all, folks!”

Oh, wait. You have to rank the three most important words in order:

1) Try
2) Something
3) Else

-TTTP Webmaster

(From the U.S. Department of Education)

EVENTS

Media Advisories

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

President Obama to Speak Directly to Students in National Address on Educational Success

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As children across America go back to school, President Obama will deliver a national address directly to students on the importance of taking responsibility for their success in school on Tuesday, September 8th at 12:00 PM EDT at Wakefield High School in Arlington. In advance of this address, the Department of Education is providing resources developed by and for teachers to help engage students and stimulate discussion about persisting and succeeding in school. The speech will be broadcast live on www.WhiteHouse.gov and C-SPAN. The speech is open to pre-credentialed media. The deadline to request credentials is 6:00PM EDT tomorrow, Thursday, September 3rd.

September 8, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA DELIVERS NATIONAL ADDRESS TO AMERICA’S SCHOOCHILDREN

Wakefield High School
4901 S. Chesterfield Rd.
Arlington, VA 22206

Media Pre-set: 6:00 AM to 7:00 AM (All equipment must be dropped at the site by 7:00 AM; media will not have access to their equipment from 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM.) Media Access: 10:00 AM

Throw: 60 ft.
Cable run: 600 ft.
Live truck parking: Trucks should enter the entrance off Dinwiddie Street and will be directed on site. All live trucks must RSVP with vehicle information. Trucks must plan to park by 7:00 AM. Live truck operators must bring cable ramps.

Media entrance: Entrance number 2, off Dinwiddie St.

Media Coverage: This event is open to pre-credentialed media. To request credentials, please RSVP online at: www.WhiteHouse.gov/the_press_office/MediaRSVP-EducationAddress-9-8-09/. The deadline to RSVP is 6:00PM EDT tomorrow, Thursday, September 3rd.

All names submitted for credentials must be accurate and reflect the identification media presents at check points for entrance. RSVPs do not guarantee access. You will receive a confirmation e-mail if you will receive a credential to cover the event.

Contact for logistical and planning purposes only: Johanna Maska at jmaska@who.eop.gov.

Well, well, well.

The White House has re-written its activist talking points for teachers/administrators disseminated by the US Department of Education and removed the language about “helping the president.”

Whitewashing: It’s the Obama way.

What they can’t whitewash is the radicalism of many of the White House Teaching Fellows responsible for drafting the material — or the radicalism of the educational mentors with whom Obama served, starting with Chicago Annenberg Challenge/Woods Fund/neighbor Bill “education is the motor-force of revolution” Ayers.

You can take Obama out of Chicago. But you can’t take the Chicago out of Obama.

By NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON

President Barack Obama’s plans for a televised back-to-school address to students next week are drawing fire from some conservatives, who say he’s just trying to indoctrinate them to his political beliefs.

In the Sept. 8 speech, Obama will challenge students to work hard, set goals for their education and take responsibility for their learning, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a letter to principals.

The Education Department is encouraging teachers to create lesson plans around the speech, using materials provided on the department website, that urge students to learn about Obama and other presidents.

“He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens,” Duncan said in a press release.

But already, some conservatives are crying foul. The chairman of the Florida Republican Party is condemning Obama’s speech as an attempt to “indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.”

“The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power,” Chairman Jim Greer said in a press release.

Added conservative talk show host Tammy Bruce, in a Twitter feed: “Make September 8 Parentally Approved Skip Day. You are your child’s moral tutor, not that shady lawyer from Chicago.” And conservative author Michelle Malkin said the lesson plans have a “heavy activist bent.”

Texas school districts are discussing whether the president’s speech will be shown — some districts are leaving it up to individual teachers with an opt out parents who don’t want their children to view the speech, according to the Houston Chronicle.

In his letter to principals, Duncan said viewing of the speech is encouraged, not mandatory. It’s the first time a president has ever given a speech addressed directly to students.