Public discourse is seriously off track when the president of the United States plans a vanilla speech to students about civics, and in response the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida accuses him of promoting socialism and Tampa Bay school superintendents allow parents to opt out. So much for respect for the nation's highest office.
President Barack Obama intends to speak to students from pre-K through sixth grade next week about citizenship, personal responsibility and civic duty. For high school students, the topics would include personal responsibility, goals and persistence. Those sound like appropriate messages for all Americans, including students.
Not to Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer. He accused Obama of using "taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America's children to his socialist agenda." Without any evidence, he claimed Obama would use the broadcast to speak to children on "government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt."
So outrageous were Greer's claims they earned a "Pants on Fire" ruling from PolitiFact.com, the St. Petersburg Times' fact-checking site, after reporters examined the president's plans. Nowhere in the material distributed about the president's plan were there specific issues mentioned, PolitiFact wrote. But never let the facts get in the way of an opportunity for Greer to pander to conservative Republicans who aren't happy with him and to make the national news.
In fact, Greer claimed he had forced the White House to back down. Yet the only thing that changed in the president's plan is a line in proposed lesson plans that suggested teachers could have students write "letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." It's been changed to writing "letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals." So there's one socialist plot foiled.
Disappointingly, Tampa Bay public schools succumbed to the manufactured uproar. Pinellas superintendent Julie Janssen instructed principals that if they plan an assembly to broadcast the speech, parents should be informed of an option to have their children not participate — or keep them at home for an excused absence. Interim Hernando superintendent Sonya Jackson went so far as to require schools to get individual permission slips for each student to either watch the message or opt out. Under that logic, any time the governor or another politician wanted to speak to students about citizenship, parents would have to be warned to protect their children.
What Obama plans to say is no different from what leaders of both parties, including former President George H.W. Bush and his son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, have done repeatedly to try to inspire students to succeed. This is not a partisan issue. This is about civic engagement and respect for the presidency. Greer is taking a cheap shot for political gain — and school officials are dignifying it by overreacting.
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