CaffeinaTed

My friends Terry Cabeen and James Baber had a lot to say about health care reform today (and they did so quite well I might add), Please check out Terry's rant and also James' two part take on the issue. Since @tcabeen and @quasijames handled the HCR front so well, I would like to back up two days to the president's address to our nation's children. What's that you say? Your children didn't get to see it during school because the administration cowered under pressure? Or worse yet, you yourself kept your children home? Whatever or whomever it was that denied your kids from receiving this important message of encouragement deserves a big giant #FAIL tag! At the very onset of announcing that this address was going to be made, the target audience was stated to be K-12th graders. That implied that the speech was to have a G-rating. There is not one president in our nation's history whom I would not have completely trusted to deliver such an address, democrat or republican! Now what really got me going is this news release I recieved from our school district which basically labels the presidential address as “The Teaching of Controversial Issues,” and linked to a pdf version of that policy. CONTOROVERSIAL!?! Have you gone fucking MAD!?! Since when is wanting our kids to be the best they can be by studying hard and listening to their parents and teachers controversial??? The entire news release basically passed the buck to principals to decide what to do. The principal at my son's high school passed the decision on to the teachers whether their students would take the 18 minutes to watch the speech. The result there was that my 17 year old son was not given the option to watch. The administration at my 13 year old's middle school decided they would preview the live telecast, and "if found non-objectionable," show it to the classes during the last period of the day. So my youngest did get to see it, but he said that many kids left early or were even picked up by their parents. I honestly could not believe all the energy that went into NOT giving our kids the opportunity to see the President of the United States offer his words of encouragement directly to each and every one of them! It should have been real easy, all they should have said was, "It will be shown to all classes, please send a note if you would like to request an alternative activity for your child." But instead, my school district took the puss way out so they would not have to deal with wacko parents that somehow felt their rights were being trampled on! All this anger is not because I feel my children were cheated. I can only say that because my three kids already get more encouragement than they can handle from their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins. But I can't help but think of all the other little fledglings in the US who do not get that message from anyone at all. To see the faces of some of the students interviewed after the speech was like looking at a light bulb that was just switched on. Kids that perhaps for the first time thought to themselves, "I can be someone that makes a difference in this world." Let me restate that there is no controversy here! I would hope this is what we ALL want for our children. What I saw in this address is what I want and expect from my country's leaders. I want forward thinking presidents and congressmen that look down the road to see what can be done to make the journey a little easier for all of us. If you and your family have not seen President Obama's address to our children, I encourage you to do so.