The President spoke to America’s students as they begin the school year. I’ve been asked 3,000 times today what all the fuss was about. Why was talk radio and the TV talking heads going full-speed, damn the torpedoes, take no prisoners on… the President’s message to school children that they are responsible for showing up. Doing their homework. Behaving themselves.
And the answer is: I have no idea.
I’m not going to try to speak for them. I’m going to speak for myself as a Utah teacher. I loved President Obama’s speech to school children. I got tears in my eyes when he reminded them that we’ve been struggling with the proper ways to hold teachers accountable for being good teachers and to hold parents accountable for being good parents and hold politicians accountable for being good policy makers. But that there’s one group we sometimes forget to hold accountable for doing what they’re supposed to do. Students.