As you know, UhBama will torment the Nation's Children on 9.08.09, with a speech that the kiddies will be forced to watch. Even worse, many of them will be forced to participate in an Edu-speak exercise outlined by the DoE. The 7th-12th grade version can be found here:
When my child – an athletic, productive, NJHS member who has been a top-5 honor student for the last two years responds truthfully during the pathetic classroom activities suggested by the DoE, she had better not receive a poor grade for her politically incorrect answers!!
We sat down together and had fun preparing for the video and the associated Q&A. The ideas are all hers (based of course on the way we have raised her). I just helped word them succinctly. Her responses are in BOLD.
Menu of Classroom Activities
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
(Grades 7-12)
Produced by Teaching Ambassador Fellows, U.S. Department of Education
September 8, 2009
Before the Speech
• Conduct a “quick write” or “think/pair/share” activity with students. (In the latter activity, students spend a few minutes thinking and writing about the question. Next, each student is paired with another student to discuss. Finally, the students share their ideas with the class as a whole). Teachers may choose to ask the following questions:
What ideas do we associate with the words “responsibility,” “persistence,” and “goals?” “Responsibility is meaningless without the concept of justice. If I work and make a profit – in other words, I take responsibility for my own economic well-being - but then a government, elected by a slim majority, uses its power of coercion, backed by the threat of force, to take my property (in the form of excessive and oppressive taxation) and give it to someone else based on that persons “need” as determined by faceless bureaucrats – then I can have NO responsibility. Persistence is exemplified by the forces of evil who want to redistribute my wealth – no matter how often we defeat them, they keep coming back.
How would we define each term? “That’s what dictionaries are for. Look it up.”
Teachers then may choose to create a web diagram of student ideas for each of the words.
• Have students participate in a “quick write” or brainstorming activity. Teachers may ask students: What are your strengths?
“One of my important strengths is that unlike our President, I never lie.”
What do you think makes you successful as a student and as a person?
“Unlike our President, I believe that people have a right to keep what they earn. I reject unearned guilt. Unlike our President, I realize that each person’s enlightened self-interest, NOT altruism, is the engine that drives prosperity and freedom. I succeed by my own efforts and expect nothing from the Government other than what is allowed and required by the Constitution. Mostly, to be successful, I need the Government to GET OUT OF MY WAY!”
• Teachers may engage students in short readings. Teachers may post in large print around the classroom notable quotes excerpted from President Obama’s speeches on education. “Hey I know! Let’s post quotes where Obama lies or says stupid, wrong things! How about ‘When I’m President I’ll put a stop to earmarks’ followed by a list of the >8000 earmarks in the ‘stimulus’ bill! Or, “I won’t have lobbyists in my government’ followed by the list of the > 47 lobbyists he appointed. Or how about this one – ‘But, if that same diabetic ends up getting their foot amputated, that's $30,000, $40-50,000 immediately the surgeon is reimbursed’, followed by the Medicare price list for amputations that show a doctor is paid less than $1000 for an amputation.”
Teachers might ask students to think alone, compare ideas with a partner, or share their thoughts with the class. Teachers could ask students to think about the following:
What are our interpretations of these excerpts?
“They remind me of Soviet-era propaganda”
Based on these excerpts, what can we infer that the president believes is important in order to be educationally successful?
“The President is proven liar. It is impossible to determine what he believes based on his speeches.”
• Create a “concept web.” Teachers may ask students to think of the following:
Why does President Obama want to speak with us today?
“He knows that many of us will be of voting age in 2012, and even more in 2016; he hopes to recruit as many of us to the Democrat party as possible.”
How will he inspire us?
“This is a leading question that presumes students are Obama supporters. He inspires me to resist his fascist, socialist agenda with every fiber of my being.”
How will he challenge us?
“I will be challenged to defeat him, and his party, in the next election.”
What might he say?
“He might offer the same disingenuous, vague platitudes that characterized his campaign and his Presidency.”
Do you remember any other historic moments when the president spoke to the nation?
“All of his speeches are historic in the sense that they are the speeches of the first openly racist, openly socialist ‘Manchurian Candidate’ elected to the office of the President of the United States.”
What was the impact?
“ His sycophantic robotic followers swooned on cue, their legs tingling and twitching. The rest of us – the ones with a clue – after we fought back our nausea - resolved to work even harder to defeat him.”
After brainstorming answers to these questions, students could create a “cause-and-effect” graphic organizer.
Menu of Classroom Activities (Grades 7-12)
President Obama’s Address to Students Across America
During the Speech
• Teachers might conduct a “listening with purpose” exercise based on the following ideas: personal responsibility, goals, and persistence. Teachers might ask pairs of students to create a word bank at the top of a notes page that has been divided into two columns. On the right-hand side, students could take notes (trying to capture direct quotations or main ideas) while President Obama talks about personal responsibility, goals, or persistence. At the end of the speech, students could write the corresponding terms from the word bank in the left-hand column, to increase retention and deepen their understanding of an important aspect of the speech.
• Teachers might conduct a “listening with purpose” exercise based on the themes of inspiration and challenges. Using a similar double-column notes page as the one described above, teachers could focus students on quotations that either propose a specific challenge to them or that inspire them in some meaningful way. Students could do this activity individually, in pairs, or in groups.
Transition/Quick Review
• Teachers could ask students to look over their notes and collaborate in pairs or small groups. Teachers might circulate and ask students questions, such as: What more could we add to our notes? What are the most important words in the speech?
“The most important was the last word in the speech– it meant that the torture of listening to it was almost over.”
What title would you give the speech?
“The Founders of America Roll in Their Graves in Horror and Disgust,” or perhaps “Obama – Evil, Stupid or Both?”
What is the thesis of the speech?
“The use of deceptive, flowery, teleprompter-driven language to turn the Nation’s children into mind-numbed Obama-Bots”
After the Speech
Guided Discussion:
• What resonated with you from President Obama’s speech? “Nothing. It made me feel despair and disgust.” What lines or phrases do you remember? “I’m doing my best to forget – it was nightmarish.”
• Whom is President Obama addressing? “Anyone who will watch and listen, which would include people forced to watch, such as students and teachers, plus his legions of sycophantic followers.” How do you know? “My epistemology is based on reason, which is the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by my senses.” Describe his audience. “I already did – see my response above.”
• We heard President Obama mention the importance of personal responsibility. In your life, who exemplifies this kind of responsibility? “Many people - but no liberal politician does.” How? Give examples. “Aside from the obvious examples of my parents and some of my friends who share my Objectivist values and who virtuously pursue those values, the best examples I can think of are the heroic characters in Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”, including John Galt, Dagny Taggart, Francisco D’Anconia, and Henry Rearden.”
• How are the individuals in this classroom similar? “We were all forced to watch Obama’s speech.” How is each student different? “The differences are too numerous to list. This question typifies the problems with American education. We waste our time with fluffy drivel instead of focusing on important things such as reading, writing, math, science, art and music. And we wonder why the rest of the world’s test scores are higher than ours!”
• Suppose President Obama were to give another speech about being educationally successful. To whom would he speak? “He would speak to whomever he can force or cajole to listen." Why? "He would do it for power and money, but would deny that as his motive. What would the president say? He would say anything, regardless of the truth, in order to foster his socialist, redistributionist goals."
• What are the three most important words in the speech? “The last three words in the speech.” Rank them. “The last one is the most important, then the next to the last, then the third to the last.”
• Is President Obama inspiring you to do anything? “He inspires me to resist him, to work toward his failure, to defeat his disastrous initiatives.” Is he challenging you to do anything? “He's trying to challenge me to become one of his junior brown-shirted minions, but instead I'm challenged to become politically active, and to vote - as soon as I am old enough - against him and any politician who supports his dangerous, anti-Freedom ideas.”
• What do you believe are the challenges of your generation? “The propensity of Democracy to degenerate, as it has in America, into a 'bread and circuses' rabble that uses the power of government to steal from the productive and reward the lazy.”
• How can you be a part of addressing these challenges? “To do everything I can to roll back to our founder’s ideals the bloated, fascist, socialist travesty that is modern America.”
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