Indoctrination Alert! Protect your kids on Sept. 8th

This Tuesday Sept. 8th President Obama is planning to address the nation's school children DIRECTLY, through a live internet broadcast at 12 noon. If you do not want Obama to have access to your children to say whatever he wants to them during their school hours without you being there, there are a few things you can do:

-Call the school's principal to find out whether the school was planning to show the speech, and if they are, let the principal know that you feel the role of the school is to educate, not to indoctrinate, and that you do not consent to have your child spoken to directly by any politician or government official, for any reason. Maybe if enough parents call, the school will not show the speech to students.

-If the school is going ahead with plans to show the speech, you can keep your child out of school that day.

-You can write up a consent form that would allow a parent of your choice, in your community, to remove your child (and all other children whose parents consent to it) from the area where the speech is being broadcast, and for that period of time, engage the children in some alternate educational activity, such as reading the text of the Constitution, for example.

Here is the government website, with details of the event:
http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml

and a letter from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to School Principals, encouraging them to broadcast the speech, and to accompany it with other activities promoting the same agenda:
http://www.ed.gov/admins/lead/academic/bts.html
[Check out the suggested activities that are meant to accompany the speech-- I think the intention is for schools to make this a day-long event in honor of the President]

The ostensible message that students should work hard to educate themselves may seem relatively benign, but the insidious subtext is that you should work hard not for yourself and your own individual happiness, but for the country, society, the state-- to make America more competitive in the world, to raise standards of living (through redistribution, presumably) for all Americans, etc... I personally don't want my children to grow up believing that they exist to serve the state, that it is somehow normal to think this way.

But fundamentally, it doesn't really matter what it is that Obama is planning to tell American children on Tuesday. What does matter is that it is totally inappropriate for him to be addressing children directly at a time when they are away from their parents, and a captive audience in their classrooms. State indoctrination of children is a hallmark of totalitarian government. Don't let it happen here.