Bringing Politics into the Classroom
Tomorrow at noon, President Obama will be addressing K-12 students on their first day back to school. There's been a lot of controversy over the speech. Outraged Republican parents have called schools, threatening to keep their kids home. Some schools are giving kids whose parents object safe rooms to sit out the speech. Other schools, like ours, are screening the speech in separate rooms and asking parents to opt in their kids.
Now that the speech has been released, some of the fear and hysteria has died down. Anyone who's read it can see that it's really a great tool to set the tone for another school year, full of concrete passages that will inspire kids everywhere. But the plans are still in place. Our school will not really be partaking in the event.
When I discussed opting in to see the speech with my daughter, she begged me not to. She was terrified of being made fun of, terrified of being one of the only kids made to miss recess to sit around a TV. She didn't want to be labeled by her friends with conservative parents as the offspring of a liberal.
l'Il watch the speech with my kids at home after school on YouTube, for as long as I can keep them still. But there won't be any of the benefits of discussing it with peers or having the teacher work Obama's themes into a lesson plan. The experience won't go down in my daughter's memories as the first time she voiced her dreams to her peers.
This is an original NJ Moms Blog post. Vanessa Druckman blogs about cooking and parenting at Chefdruck Musings.
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