Should the president be able to address school children
 

Next week the US president is planning on addressing all of the nation's school children in a televised address to encourage them to keep up with their studies and stay in school.

Extreme right-wing conservatives are calling this an opportunity for the president to indoctrinate and brainwash America's children with socialist ideals.

What do you think?

I think nutters say anything to get airtime, and should keep to making tinfoil hats.

What are they going to do, break into the transmission like the lo-techs in Johnny Mneumonic?

Under all this is a feeling of fear. Obama is a relatively young, modernized president; a real change from the staid old boys' club like Dubya.

But take the abovementioned with a grain of salt, since I'm Canadian. We have enough trouble with a gloryseeking senior citizen wanting to destroy the government just to give him the power he lusts after...

Just by saying "extreme ring-wing conservatives", that automatically debunks anything that comes after it ;)

I'm sick of people calling him a socialist. First off, he's not. Second, even if he were, it's not like capitalism has done so well for us. ;)

I wish he would actually do something about education instead of talking about it....

Capitalism has been benificial to the world and I do not think that he needs to be broad cast into the schools. Drop out rates were lower in the last couple of years and it dose seem a bit socialist to broad cast yourself into class room. have you read 1984 next he is going to give morning reports of the "successes" of his administration.

Was it socialist when Ronald Reagan did it? Was it socialist when George Bush Sr. did it?

We all know where George Bush Jr. was on the morning of 9-11-2001. Was it socialist then?

The problem isn't (and never was) the president addressing school children. Many other presidents have done the same. Justified concern was raised when the Dept. of Ed. sent out guidlines to all the nation's public schools that included suggested homework assignments to write letters to the president about how they could be good servants to the president and help promote his policies and such. The administration admitted their (again) overstepping and has redacted all the pertinent comments and suggestions.

This is Mao type shit folks, and they were hoping to slide it by before anyone thought about it too much. Fortunately, we still live in a country where public officials are watched and taken to task by responsible citizens.

Well, frankly, I'd rather Obama have his tongue cut out...

Still, it's pretty dumb if the President of a country can't even talk to his children... America is very divided... perhaps it's time for another civil war? This time you've got nukes...

Let's take a step back into reality, please. There was never anything asking school children to write papers about "they could be good servants to the president" and how they could "help promote his policies". That is a complete exaggeration of the truth which is school children were going to be asked what they could do to help the president.

Literally : Students were going to be asked to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president".

This could be telling the president he needs to make new jobs because my daddy lost his. This could be telling the president to stop the war in Iraq.

Tksensei, you have been duped by the conservative media machine.

Conservatives protested this innocuous question, and it has since been revised....leading only to more conservative criticism, and outlandish claims like tksensei gave above.

Do you have any links to news articles for this?