Teaching our children the Washington way

    President Obama gave a speech two days ago to students around the country, emphasizing the importance of working hard and staying in school. And unless you've been locked in a basement somewhere, you've probably heard about it.
    That is in large part because, as soon as the White House announced Obama's plans for the speech, the right wing launched a hailstorm of attacks at the president. One of his most vocal critics was Jim Greer, the Florida Republican Party chair, who said that Obama was abusing his power in order to inculcate young students with his own "socialist ideology." In another baffling remark, Greer said the speech was intended to "justify [Obama's] 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."
    A speech on what can only be considered a universally appreciated value — that of keeping one's nose to the grindstone and working as hard as necessary to accomplish things one believes in — cannot be logically construed as a push for radical policymaking. Indeed, Obama's address turned out to be relatively innocuous, promoting education and personal responsibility.
    Nonetheless, because of charges like Greer's, many parents chose to keep their children out of class on Sept. 8 and a number of schools were compelled to provide contingency plans for students whose parents felt uncomfortable about Obama's telecast. A school district in Arlington, Texas decided it would be inappropriate to show its students Obama's speech. Yet the same Arlington community leaders have no problem shuttling off students later this month to hear an address from former President George W. Bush at Cowboys Stadium. Clearly, it is not the speech itself that is drawing the objections.
    The controversy generated by Obama's straightforward, pro-education speech highlights the opportunist partisanship that has defined the American political scene in recent years, a partisanship that has serious, detrimental effects on our lives as citizens. Politicians have chosen to use a speech touting the basic value of hard work to frighten Americans into believing that their president is out to maliciously indoctrinate and manipulate 10-year-olds. Meanwhile, what issues have they been ignoring?
    The irony in all of this is that students of all backgrounds and family ideologies can learn a lot from Obama. Everyone knows the story of the president's upbringing: His father abandoned him when he was two years old, leaving his poor, single mother to raise him alone in Hawaii and then Indonesia before sending him to live with his grandparents.
    Obama rose from these modest beginnings to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and eventually become president of the United States.
    Scare +tactics and propaganda are nothing new in politics. But in the future, perhaps we can save the bickering for the issues that truly merit contention.