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Debra Siegal said:
I am highly offended by your post. I am a parent of three children. It is not easy being a parent. Daily, I am faced with decisions and problems that I have to work out with no prior experience. It is only by the grace of God that I am able to parent these children. So, to have a person who has never had a child of his own (as far as I know) openly criticize me as a parent, striving to do what I feel is best for my children is offensive. Were you directing your post (and the previous) directly at me? Well, no my name is not mentioned, nor did you specifically direct me here. However, I am a parent who is opposed to Obama speaking to children in school. Yet, my reasons are not because I fear Obama, his speech or that he will “indoctrinate” my children to his political beliefs. I oppose his speech because I believe very strongly that it should be a PARENT’S decision to allow their children to listen to a speech BY ANYONE! Parents have a right and responsibility to “train up their children.” How can I abide by this God-given standard if I am not present when the most powerful man in the country is addressing my child? High schoolers and middle schoolers are old enough and at an age of accountability to be able to hear a speech from the president and make an informed decision without as much parental guidance. My 3rd grader and my Kindergartner are not. They are impressionable. It doesn’t matter if Obama was giving a politically motivated speech or not. I want the ability to discuss anything he has to say with my children. I have read his speech and there are parts of the speech that I would highlight and gladly share with my children. But again, it needs to be my choice.
Now much of this doesn’t apply to me personally because I home school my children. In your previous post, you stated, “If hearing one speech is enough to brainwash them, something has seriously gone awry with their parenting skills when it comes to teaching their kids to think for themselves.” and “I mean, come on, people. Let’s consider a fifth grader. The average age is about eleven. Voting age is eighteen. That means two things: first, the kid won’t even be able to vote for Obama for a second term, and second, the parents have seven years to rant and rave about how wrong Obama is and turn their kids back onto the “right” path. (Pun intended.)
Are they trying to tell us, without coming right out and saying so, that they can’t even do that?”
I can’t believe that you would lump all conservative parents into this same scenario. I am a conservative parent and I have chosen to homeschool my children, not to keep them away from being a thinking individual, but so I CAN TEACH them to THINK FOR THEMSELVES!, not regurgitate a teacher’s or a textbook’s beliefs. If my children chose a different political or religious belief when they are older, I may not like their decisions, but I will love them just the same and support them in their choice. My main goal as a parent is to teach my children how to think for themselves. I do share my beliefs with them but I do not force them on my children. But at 8 and 5 they are in no position to hear a speech and process it without guidance.
If Obama would like to address the nation’s children, that is fine by me. But make the address on a publicly televised channel, in the evening, where I can watch WITH my children and discuss the message with them when it is relevant and with an intelligent perspective. I can gain so much understanding of my children’s thought processes by watching how they interact with something.
You have yet to have the privilege and blessing of raising a child. But you also haven’t yet had the burden of responsibility of raising a child. Please do not insult parents for desiring to have a choice in their children’s activities. Do not make blanket statements about the reasons behind a parent’s actions until you have had a chance to fully understand that parent’s reasons and motivations. I would never dream of insulting you. You and I differ in our political beliefs and that’s okay. I won’t insult your intelligence or your motivations. It won’t change your mind and really it’s not important. But I would ask that you would extend that same favor to those of who don’t agree with you. You don’t win any points to your stance by name-calling, sarcasm or insulting us or our beliefs.
# 7 September 2009 at 9:23 pm

Patrick (author) said:
Debra,
Thank you for the response and I appreciate your take on the situation. Since I know you and your husband personally, and since it has been my experience to observe that you both are excellent parents of three, let me address a couple of important points.
First, on my experience — or lack thereof – in being a parent: on the day one becomes a parent, there does not appear out of thin air any “instruction manual” or any new-found intelligence that allows you to know for certain what is and isn’t right. Good parents make mistakes every week. Some of the most well-meaning parents do things that occasionally aren’t good for their kids. Look at the number of books there are about how to properly raise a parent; as I’ve said here before, not having a child is not a sufficient reason for someone to “not be allowed” to have an opinion on what is or isn’t good for kids. We were all kids at one time, after all, and most of us, whether we have them or not, know what would have been good and helpful for us.
Secondly, and more importantly: no, I wasn’t directing my comments at your personally, nor was I lumping all conservative parents into one single group for the purposes of attack. I understand your concerns and those aren’t the ones I was addressing. You shouldn’t be offended at all.
But let me explain myself a little better.
You aren’t the first Christian parent to say that you’d object to anyone speaking to your child that you couldn’t be present to hear. A young pastor here in Charleston (not one that you and I see on a regular basis, for what it’s worth) said that he’d have objected to Reagan’s talk in 1988 and Bush’s in 1991 because he wouldn’t have known in advance what was being said and wouldn’t have been there to immediately address things with his kids.
In other words, he seemed to be operating not on an unfair political agenda, but rather a fair, caring parental perspective. I can’t fault any parent — conservative, liberal, or middle of the road — for that. In fact, the blindness to political persuasion such a universal concern implies is something to be greatly respected: it represents a genuine level of engagement in what the child is exposed to that transcends something like politics.
Story after story in the Bible demonstrates that Christ way was compassionate and just. We worship a God we believers insist must be fair, must be loving and must be compassionate on a level we can’t possibly fathom. Yet a group of parents were awfully quick to jump to a conclusion that did not demonstrate that kind of attitude. Some of those parents — ones who weren’t behaving as if they were so interested about their kids as much as not letting “that side” have their say — took it a step forward: committing false witness against Obama, insisting that he was going to behave in a dishonorable way, that he was surely going to try to “brainwash” young kids into a specific world view resembling one the parents did not share, acting as if there could be no doubt that he’d do otherwise.
I ask you, Debra, in all sincerity, to read Obama’s speech, not as a parent who has to decide whether you’d let your kids hear it, but from the perspective of being one of those 5th graders who was hearing those words for the first time. Can you honestly tell me that this one speech would have, in any way, “damaged” you?
Even so, your parents might not have wanted you to hear it. But if it was for the reasons you have with regard to your own kids, and not the reasons I’ve listed above as the reasons for my criticism, I couldn’t fault them, either.
Let me be clear here: I don’t for a moment insult parents who merely want to have a choice in their children’s activities. I applaud those parents. There seems to be far too few of them these days. I don’t even intend to insult parents who are specifically more conservative: this is America, and we should each have a right to not only have our opinion, but to voice it.
My intent was to question those parents who were so obsessed with their own political leanings that they were making what sure sounds like an attempt to carry political games-playing into the classroom about what, exactly, they feared so much?
Perhaps, even after years of writing these pieces, I managed not to be clear enough that I wasn’t attacking all conservative parents. My own parents are rate pretty high on the conservative scale themselves; but in all candor, I think they’d have not objected if then-President Jimmy Carter announced that he was going to talk to school kids about the importance of working hard and staying in school. (Yes, I’m dating myself there, but he’d have been one of the presidents in office when I was in the age of the target audience.)
You, unlike other parents to which I referred, raise valid, basic concerns. One does not have to have had a child of his own to recognize that. One also does not have to be a parent to spot that there were some out there who, despite repeated assurances about what the topic was going to be, had a problem not with what was to be said but who was saying it.
I’m grateful to you and any parents who are able to separate politically-fueled hysteria from legitimate concerns about their children’s welfare. I only wish there were more of you.
# 7 September 2009 at 11:26 pm

Carl said:
I have to say that if President Reagan or the elder President Bush had gone to a Black Liberation Theology Church (I’ll leave it up to the reader to investigate that theological doctrine) for 23 years and associated with the kind of characters that Obama has been identified with, including the recently resigned Van Jones the SELF proclaimed communist revolutionary, I would be reticent to have my child listen to a speech before previewing it as well. And that is just the information that Obama can’t keep us from seeing. He has refused to show college transcripts, ANY of his work from school, The Harvard Law Review or even how a poor boy raised by his grandparents even got into Harvard. The same people who believe that this is the original draft of this speech are probably the ones who also believed that Obama was going to bring political change to Washington. And we can all see how that has worked out. What was it he said to Republicans…..We won. Get used to it? Nice….very presidential and bipartisan. His policies since going into office have been extremely left of center and he is not known for being a proud American per his European Apology Tour 2009. He could have avoided all of this controversy by posting his speech last week if he had wanted to. I have seen the lesson plan that was released earlier and if I was a parent I would have significant issues with some of that material. But then again, I don’t believe healthcare is a right and I still believe in individual liberty as opposed to the collective. Because of Obama’s belief system I am not going to trust him just on the face of it because he is POTUS. I’m sure any liberal would feel the same way if they found out today Dick Cheney was going to make a speech to their child next week.
# 8 September 2009 at 11:31 am

Patrick (author) said:
Interesting points, Carl. How about this: based on what is in the text of the speech, would you let your child listen to his message now? If not, what specifically in his message do you find offensive?
A few other points:
He has refused to show college transcripts, ANY of his work from school, The Harvard Law Review or even how a poor boy raised by his grandparents even got into Harvard.
Didn’t Bush refuse to show military records when the controversy over his military service, which, for the record, I sided with him on? What, exactly, is the controversy here? Are we doubting that Obama ever went to Harvard? Are we doubting that he received any education? What is it we’re looking for in these records, and how does anything to be found there specifically help anything right now?
“What was it he said to Republicans…..We won. Get used to it? Nice….very presidential and bipartisan.”
Carl, do you really believe that past Republican presidents have been genial to the Democratic party? And if Bush had said this to Kerry supporters in 2004, would you have been okay with that?
I’m sure any liberal would feel the same way if they found out today Dick Cheney was going to make a speech to their child next week.
Agreed 100%. And the same ones who’d protest Cheney but who are defending Obama’s right to do to the same are guilty of the same double standard. No question about it.
But then your choosing Cheney instead of Bush is a little ironic: I don’t recall a massive liberal protest in Florida prior to the morning of 9/11, when Bush was planning to be in that Florida school to read to school children and pose for pictures specifically designed as a photo op to promote his education agenda. Granted, there were plenty of liberal protests about his extended stay there after being informed of the terror attacks, but those protests centered on his perceived failure to act in a national emergency and had absolutely nothing to do with his being in “direct contact” with school kids.
# 8 September 2009 at 2:56 pm
Lowcountry Bloggers » Addressing the Children » Blog Archive said:
[...] Patrick: The parents who were so sure, absolutely convinced that there were unimaginable levels of improper politics that were going to be “sold” to unsuspecting children will never, of course, admit that their suspicions were the slightest bit unreasonable. They’ll only sit back with a big smile on their face, confident that the stink they raised was the only thing that prompted Obama to post the text of the speech to begin with. (Despite the fact that it’s practically routine that a president releases the complete text of a major address before he sits down to deliver it…it is the Information Age, after all.) [...]
# 8 September 2009 at 9:20 pm

Carl said:
Well boys….let’s open up a big old bag of double standards shall we. Allow me to reference:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/When-Bush-spoke-to-students-Democrats-investigated-held-hearings-57694347.html
Patrick, in response to your post: No, I am very pleased with the final draft of the speech to the kids. It’s all about responsibility and making disciplined choices now to make one’s choices easier in the future. He is an excellent speaker but I’m not sure how long those kids sat still enough to receive what turned out to be a positive message.
My reference to his lack of disclosure only went to reinforce the air of mystery surrounding Obama in so many regards. And what we are/were looking for in vetting this candidate for POTUS is something that speaks to his mindset. Since he was relatively unknown politically these things become important. If you can’t judge a man by the company he keeps (which we were told we shouldn’t) then you look to the words he says.
And no, I don’t for a second doubt that the GOP has offered anything in the way of excess civility in the past. But the difference is they didn’t run on precisely that and put it in big, bold letters everywhere they go…..CHANGE! He said it out loud that there would be a hand extended and then just…..didn’t. It wasn’t a surprise I assure you.
The reason I chose Cheney was twofold. A.) Liberals hate him more right now I think. B.) I’m Libertarian and no fan of GW Bush so I can’t and won’t defend him in many regards.
Thanks for the debate. I enjoy it.
# 8 September 2009 at 11:25 pm

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