Handling the President’s Speech to Students

The controversy that raised around the speech to students during the school day by the President will likely make that speech one of the most watched, most listened to speeches he has made to date, and perhaps will make during whatever time he serves in office.  It’s all in the way it’s been handled.  I’ve read a lot of statements and comments on the internet in the past few days, many of them from students in schools which were not planning to show the speech, for one reason or another.  Students, particularly high school students, are sensitive to this kind of thing, and they can spot hypocrisy from a long distance away.  Most school age students, particularly those over middle school age, will listen to, or watch, this speech on their own, and as a result, will be left to draw their own conclusions.

The content of the speech itself is not a problem.  Released days before it was to be delivered, for most people it is not a matter of the content, but of who is delivering it.  Political polarization in this country has, sadly, made it impossible for the President of the United States to do anything without having one side or another attach political motivation to it and interpret it in that light.  Schools are looked upon as captive audiences, and parents, or at least those who are part of the polarized constituencies, look at everything through the lens of partisanship, their own motives as well as what they perceive from others. 

Sadly, the pressure to be politically correct caused some Christian school administrators to determine that the speech would be censored from their schools.  Perhaps they heard some shrill voices from influential parents, which, unfortunately, is often a decision making factor in Christian school communities.  Perhaps they could not stomach the thought of a politician they dislike, and disagree with, having an audience in their school classrooms.  Perhaps they just considered it another unnecessary disruption in a school day already filled with unnecessary disruptions.  Whatever the reason, you can bet that students in schools where the speech was not shown found a way to either read it, listen to it, or watch it at some later point.  In fact, I would venture to say that students at schools where a decision was made not to show the speech would probably be more likely to listen or watch it, and do so with more intention and interest than they would have done if it had been part of their classroom day. 

As a former civics/government/economics teacher in Christian and public school, presenting the whole scope of government debate, the politics, the arguments, the moral and ethical issues, and from a Christian perspective, how to integrate and apply Biblical principles, was always a classroom exercise.  Rather than shielding students from politics, and from views with which we may disagree, I always considered it a whole lot better to expose them and teach them how to apply critical thinking skills with a strong Christian philosophical basis, grounded in the teachings of scripture than it was to either silently ignore the issue, or try to censor it from the classroom.  I also found that it was a whole lot more effective to facilitate students in their own discovery of the Biblical principles and how they applied them than it was to simply lecture and spoon feed that material to them. 

In this particular case, nothing the President said was political or controversial, at least, that would be my own evaluation of the speech.  If they were able to watch it in your classroom, that means you were present, and you could have been a guiding influence in the evaluation process.  If they simply go watch or listen to it by themselves, on their IPod, or YouTube, they won’t necessarily have that. 

Telling your kids what to think, when it comes to politics, is not effective.  Teaching them how to apply Biblical truth to their thinking, and encouraging them to discover things on their own, with your guidance, may not guarantee that they will think exactly like you, or that they will always agree with you, but if they have to think through an issue, and they are taught how to apply Biblical principles to their thinking, they are put in a position of having to make a choice, based on the truth.