Did You Know...

President Obama told a student reporter last month that he would be making an address to schoolchildren on September 8:

ServiceWire has the announcement and broadcast schedule for the speech.

The Daily Paul picked up the story last week and linked to teachers’ manuals pegged to Obama’s address, which have now been linked on Drudge.

The documents have a heavy activist bent:

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech:

• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

Schools have used students as little lobbyists on everything from illegal immigration to gay marriage to anti-war activism.

And most recently: Census collection.

Will Obama be able to resist issuing a call to youth arms to marshal help in passing his legislative agenda?

The thing is: He won’t need to make the call explicit.

Obama zealot teachers like this one across the country will do all the extra-curricular bullying and haranguing for him. Remember:

Partial transcript:

Reason number 999,999,965 to take control of your own children’s education.