I find the hoop-de-do over President Obama’s speech to our country’s schoolchildren even more amazing to the presumptuousness of the White House decision to interrupt what for many is the usually chaotic enough already first day of school at what is lunch time in much of the country.
I have vague memories of hearing President Eisenhower when I was a child in grade school. My memory says it was during the national hysteria that we weren’t teaching our children enough science which came after the Soviet Union had launched the first. My memory is of a radio being brought into our classroom and a speech coming over WSUI radio [University of Iowa radio] from Iowa City. Because we would have been listening to a single house-sized radio with the limited sound projection that three- or four-inch speakers provided over a low-power station in the next county and having to hear it over whatever sounds even an attentive audience of thirty or so would have been making I don’t remember hearing much, but I think all the leader of the free world was saying was that America’s children needed to study more because the other country’s children were. It probably took no more than ten or fifteen minutes.
This might not have been a national address and it may not have been especially aimed at children, but I don’t remember hearing of any parents or politicians objecting. And, since I had not even thought about this for half a century, I may be a bit off on what I remember.
I have vague memories of hearing President Eisenhower when I was a child in grade school. My memory says it was during the national hysteria that we weren’t teaching our children enough science which came after the Soviet Union had launched the first. My memory is of a radio being brought into our classroom and a speech coming over WSUI radio [University of Iowa radio] from Iowa City. Because we would have been listening to a single house-sized radio with the limited sound projection that three- or four-inch speakers provided over a low-power station in the next county and having to hear it over whatever sounds even an attentive audience of thirty or so would have been making I don’t remember hearing much, but I think all the leader of the free world was saying was that America’s children needed to study more because the other country’s children were. It probably took no more than ten or fifteen minutes.This might not have been a national address and it may not have been especially aimed at children, but I don’t remember hearing of any parents or politicians objecting. And, since I had not even thought about this for half a century, I may be a bit off on what I remember.
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