Politicians don’t taint the youth with speeches. They do so through standardized tests and textbooks. President Barack Obama delivered a controversial speech Tuesday directed toward students, angering many parents who have opposing political views. Some parents even extracted their children from class for the day.
Most of this anger was not about the speech’s message, but because of political issues. Parents felt that this speech might be a form of propaganda to turn their children against them.
Good or bad, any speech delivered by the president is indeed propaganda, but not the type intended for memorization and subsequent regurgitation as the truth.
Parents should not fear what the president tells their children. They should be terrified of of what politicians force their children to learn. Although students who missed class were given an absence, their parents had control only over what their children were exposed to during that day.
Some concerns were valid, but presidents have always addressed children. Former President George W. Bush posed the question, ‘Is our children learning?’ Obama will do the same, only more eloquently.
Parents made no great strides in freeing their children from the monster that is politics.
They have limited control over what happens to the minds of their children each day that they are in class. The tainting of youth is accomplished by control over textbook content and the material that appears on standardized tests.
By deciding what is essential to learn before graduation, the government expresses some control of a student. Treating textbooks like gospel and using standardized tests as the No. 1 way to gauge a student’s intellect is the true villain of political propaganda, not a presidential speech regarding the importance of staying in school.
