Actions like allowing parents to opt out on a presidential speech to children appear to be innocuous, but are not. They set the table for bad manners and a poor diet. And so they should be challenged.
Here are some guidelines for addressing the presidential speech ban or opt-out issue at your local level.
Frankly, it should be embarrassing to all Americans that this is even in the public discourse.
As a rural school board member, one of my board's jobs is reviewing parental requests to ban or allow opting out of a particular activity. The issue of the upcoming Obama address did not come up at our school, but if it had, I would be embarrassed if we even gave it credence.
Yet schools here in Nebraska are giving parents the opt out decision, and schools from New York to Texas are even refusing to show the speech at all.
Refusing to show the speech is wrong on so many levels that it literally means children should be kept home from school that day so they can watch the speech from home. Schools who do this should have to deal with the financial effects of the resulting truancy spike.
If a ban or opt-out decision happens at your school, contact your school administration immediately. Ask them what other presidential messages they will be allowing the parents to opt out of having their children hear - the Gettysburg address, for example? Do they want kids to feel connected to history, or only be allowed to get a disconnected, politically filtered version of it?
Ask: would they do the same if the governor came to speak at the school? How about a football star or other public leadership figure? Can parents opt their children out of school announcements by the principal? What level of authority figure is subject to option, and what kind of content?
Thus schools that allow parental opt-out on this one particular item may very well be objecting to the person, not the office or the message. They need to be called out on this.
Public schools would appear more rational and balanced if they do not buy into the politicization of the simple idea of a presidential "stay in school" message to children at all.
As a last resort, any decision to allow opt out, if made at all, should be made based solely on a reading of the contents of the speech, which is being made available to all schools Obama will only talk about the importance of staying in school, not controversial public policy.
Both Reagan and Bush 41 did the same thing - gave a start of the year speech to schoolchildren - except Reagan also talked to the kids about the importance of keeping taxes low. Schools that did not allow parents to opt out of the Reagan speech should not be allowing them to opt out of the Obama speech. Period.
This type of issue is why I am on a school board, even though I have no children in that school system. I want to make sure that local kids are not being subjected to nonsense like this.
I find it interesting to hear radical right wingers defend this action as only "a public opportunity to take an option or not" when it comes to public education, and then so vehemently oppose the same thing for public health care - the public OPTION.
If they can reconcile those two positions, maybe we could have serious discussion. In the meantime it's just veiled racism, plain and simple. But since nobody will admit to that, we must shine the glaring light of illogic on local school boards using any means possible.
If you don't have a child in a local school system that adopts one of these idiotic strategies, write a letter to the editor. What good is a school administration that won't allow the students to see a message about staying in school? Remember Dover!