Comments on: President Obama’s School Speech

By: JoeC

JoeC — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 03:53:42 +0000

Pelmo, I think we are a lot more open-minded and comfortable with change than most (if real change, perhaps, is apt to ever actually await us round the corner…) Just talking with friends and fellow countrymen and observing the hysterical gas and arm wavings these past few weeks, I think that our nation is a mighty big ship that, if it ever turns, will have to set all engines full steam ahead to even turn slowly. If I were to put my cynical nature aside for a minute, I think that for some of the poorest and most parent-abandoned minority kids (racist? maybe so, but minorities face the highest drop-out and incarceration rate…), seeing a famous brown-skinned college-graduated elected-by-a-majority-of-white-men President address them (instead of a successful rap star or athlete or lotto winner…) may be a very earth-shattering, changing experience in their lives…maybe the first moment of their lives that allows them to really shake off the intellectual-inferiority that the undercurrents of our culture still whisper incessantly in their ears…baby steps…damn small baby steps on a hundred mile’s journey, but extraordinarily awesome baby steps nevertheless.

By: Xman

Xman — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:04:56 +0000

Have a cigar, Pelmo.
You might become an anarchist yet.

By: Xman

Xman — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 02:00:57 +0000

I think it is already waaaay too late.
This may why we are rushing to try to hang onto as much of our position through military dominance/expansion as we can.

By: Xman

Xman — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:58:05 +0000

“Has it ever occured to these parents to teach their kids how to listen to the opposing p.o.v. without having their beliefs and values crumble?”

Answer: No. That would be contrary to the three desert dogma’s.

By: pelmo

pelmo — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:56:16 +0000

I agree with the statements made by both you and LaSirena. But the presidents speech was nothing more then a pep rally speech that did nothing to address our failing education system.

I wanted to hear that we were going to take the emphasis away from athletics and put most of our resources into academics. I wanted to hear that we would stop spending our limted education funds on state of the art gyms and stadiums for athletics. Instead start building science and math labs. Make the smart students the heroes instead of jocks. The teachers would be paid more, rather then the coaches

I wanted to hear that teachers would be allowed to teach so that students would learn, instead of teaching kids how to take tests, so that bureocrats look good. No more red tape or fancy named government programs.

He should have used your line about scrubbing toilets and trimming lawns as foreign students come here and take away all the good paying jobs.

I firmly believe that our politicians from both parties are doing the bidding of the big corporations, as they give fancy lip service for the need of better educated Americans. But at every turn they let our education system slip further behind the rest of the world, so that there is an abundant supply of cheap, uneducate labor force here.