Obama/Bush Speeches – Double Standard?
September 9, 2009 by Jennifer Walker-Journey
Filed under Parenting
How about the school district in Arlington, Texas. It refused to allow students the opportunity to hear President Obama’s speech to students Tuesday because it didn’t want to interfere with lessons. Yet the same school district sees no problem in interrupting classes to bus 500 of its students to attend a Super Bowl-related event later this month where former president George W. Bush will speak. Sound like a double standard to you?
The school makes this distinction: “…it’s a field trip that parents have to grant permission for students to attend.”
Let’s see, current president Obama spoke about the importance of education and to not give up on school. Arlington schools did not broadcast the speech in its schools but did allow students to check out of school to watch it at a local church with parental permission. That is, if they could find transportation to get them to the church and back to school in a reasonable amount of time.
Former president Bush is speaking September 21st at a North Texas Super Bowl XLV Host Committee event at Cowboys Stadium in support of the Super Bowl’s new education program. Twenty-eight fifth-grade classes, or about 500 students, will be bussed there. Parents will have to sign the usual “field trip” permission slips so their children can attend.
Sound biased to you?
Source: Star-Telegram
Photo, Flickr, marcn
Umm. I just find the whole thing to be nuts. I can see where the original handouts were not the best idea and upset some people, but they’ve been changed, right? So what is the problem now? When did listening to someone telling you to stay in school and work hard to get a good education become a bad thing?
And, while I can’t say people have never shown such disrespect for a President and his office before, I can say it has been awhile. (I was surprised when I read that there was a revolt when Washington was President and the mob almost carried him off until he calmed them down!)All this quarreling and refusal to work together is not helping anything.
Our local school system didn’t air the speech live because not all the students would have been able to hear it because of the time it was broadcast, but will be airing it Thursday. It sent home notices about the speech and told parents how to opt out if they didn’t want the President encouraging their kids to do well in school.