http://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.  

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work –– that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK.  Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?  

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

We'll never know now what he intended to say. Anyone who thinks that Emannuel/Axelrod wouldn't rewrite his speech to be totally middle of the road and broad based in light of the initial reaction to the announcement is an idiot.

Any school that would play that waste of time may want to instead consider Tom and Jerry reruns if all they are looking to do is kill a half hour of the school day.

O'RLY?



I don't know their stories in detail - but was it "hard work" or "special opportunities" that the average kid (78% of them are white) would never see?

wow.. someone must be extremely misguided to think this will inspire kids to do better in school.. Just let kids be kids and they will sort out those successful and those who are not.

Is this BS going to be beamed into high schools also?

Excellent!  Thanks for posting this.  Back with you shortly...

"I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning".

Tag and waiting for bearzwith_grillz

Thanks for posting this!

The lessons afterwards were the teachings and memorization of the Quaran?

BHO is smart.  Keep in my by the time the mid terms roll around, lots of these kids (jr and sr) will be of voting age.  They will remember BHO and that he is a democrat.  It might help get more votes out for the mid terms in his favor.  This was a political stunt.

yep...can't wait for more apologies.

You can see hints of what used to be in the speech before it was leaked and they were forced to tell parents about it.  The comments on making the country "fair" etc.  That's why it wasn't released until now.  The speech got a total rewrite from the "what can you do to help the president" bullshit in the original version.  This is the save face version.  

Remember... this was leaked before it ever hit whitehouse.gov or the Department of Education website.

on drudge:

'I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot'...
'I'm working hard to fix up your classrooms'...


OBAMA LECTURE TO STUDENTS: WASH YOUR HANDS

Did he thank them for inheriting the largest debt ever due to his retard policies?

My favorite quote too! " mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school"A little slip up there.

There's a lot of Socialist undertone to that speech and I'm not one to go looking for it.

Seems like the basic message is "Do well in school, not for your own benefit, but for everyone else's."

Typical... the example students he chose to talk about all have ethnic names.

A lot of "I"s and "my"s in there.

Wow
Obama had such a hard life, why are my parents so mean to him.  They must be evil.

This speech is astill a narcisstic hand job.

Or they'll remember that he's the pompous asshole who told them to study more and wash their hands.

What a boring crock of shit

Edit: I still think he is trying to win over the hearts and minds of the kids to further their indoctrination. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. Hitler did it.

I'm ok with this.  Yes, it was probably re-written, and that's what took so long to get it out.  But the main thing is, I really wish his political philosophies lined up with this speech.  It's all about trying hard and personal responsibility.  He is moving our country to a proven method of making people lazy and dependent.

I was hoping he would justify why his kids don't go to public schools, but he imports DC public schoolers to work in the White House fields.

Overall, not too bad.  It's not going to, in itself, indoctrinate kids into submitting to a totalitarian government, but the undertones are there.  Where GHWB's speech focused on the individual and each student working hard to ensure a bright future, BHO seems to say that kids should work hard so they can contribute their fair share to The State.  That's overstating it a little, but I like to err on the side of less government influence.
These caught my attention, but then, I'm a pretty paranoid guy:



Getting a little worse, a little collectivist, but still not awful:







ETA: I'd let my kids listen to it, then sit down and have a talk with them.  If they were old enough, I'd compare this to GHWB's speech and use it as a demonstration of the differences between those who value the individual and those who value the state.



(edited to fix quote brackets)





 

The only applicable parts of that speech have already been delivered to my kids... by me.

Translation: F you, Whitey. I'm not talking to you, and I'm not going to use any of you as examples.

in..........

Holy shit. I fucking knew it.

Got to love this part.  I doubt most kids have any idea where schools get their funds.  Hint - its not the Federal Govt.

Edit - I am proud to say.  I asked my daughter and she knew where the funding comes from.

Not likely.  The younger generation is "awed" by this clown.  They will remember it positively.



 

You're overestimating the effect he has on the "younger generation."

I'm 26, and in college so I'm around the 18-21 crowd daily.  The majority of students don't like him.  Even in the art department, where, according to some, all the Liberals hang out there is no love for Obama.

Double tap

Glad I'm not in school anymore. Just listening to that idiot speak makes my blood pressure go through the roof.

Not a bad speech. Seems like a lot of people are jumping in place over this for no reason.

OMG INDCOTIRANAT THA KIDZ?!?!  

Talk about drama queens.

The accompanying "menu of classroom activities" still bugs the shit out of me, and I've found out our school district will not participate in that portion but might air a recording of the speech on Thursday after the superintendent and principals have a chance to review it.



I asked the following question in another thread but didn't get an answer.



Can someone cite the specific statute this person refers to? I want to
be able to read the statute for myself. To me, this is the key issue.





––––––––––––––––











http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/03/white-house-withdraws-students-help-obama/

Thats pretty much the same around these parts. But then again, I go to a community college in a small city. USF is infested with liberals who adore Obama.

You know there are plenty of kids who will think "Why in the world did your American mother TAKE YOU TO INDONESIA?"

You picked out little snippets of his speech, and the correlated them into how he is talking about undertones that suggest to kids a totalitarian government is good.

1.) Volunteering in the community: You do realize, that it is a requirement to volunteer in the community if you want to earn scholarships for college? It is also taken into consideration when you apply for college. If two students have the same GPA and test scores, but one has more community service than the other, the one with the more community service will get accepted over the other. How does that relate to a totalitarian gov.?

2.) "We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country."

By quoting this I guess you support students dropping out of school, and collecting social security as soon as they can?

3.) "What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. "

It's true, if we teach our kids nothing, then they won't succeed in the future, how is that suggesting a totalitarian gov.?

And you've picked out little snippets from my post.  As I said, over all this speech is, in and of itself, not bad.  I said there are undertones of totalitarianism/statism/socialism/collectivism/whatever you want to call it.  BHO's call to action is "do well in [government] schools so you can do well for the community."



Personally, I'd rather see something along the lines of "Get an education because it determines your own future."  If everyone in our nation strives to do his best, then the community will benefit.  If people start thinking in terms of State first, me second, well, that's bad.



Of course serving the community is good, but it's best when done on a volunteer basis, not because the government expects you to.  If you've heard Obama's and Emmanuel's comments about mandatory national service for all, you know what I'm talking about.  The subtle little snippets I picked out will, over 13 years of being pounded into little mushy heads add up.



I don't think any kiddos are going to hear this speech and become mindless automatons, but because I am an adult and am well aware of what BHO is, I find some of the things questionable.  If you accept what he says without question, that's your perogative.



 

more informative and entertaining
The government can...

given his usual deadpan monotone delivery ought to have half of them back asleep in two mins.

"Wear sunscreen"

Wouldm't really work that wel for BHO would it

'zactly



 

I read this while picturing Obama's head bouncing side-to-side doing the TOTUS dance.

-p.

Yeah, I'm sure he busted his ass washing dishes to pay for all of that ivy league education he refuses to release records on.

Even MOAR - Obama Man

This.

Every day I wake up, I hate this man more and more.