About That Education Speech

I raised this point on the radio the other day with Rich Bailey prior to the President's speech to school kids. "When did it become OK for kids to disrespect the Office of the President?"  For the last several days - I heard all kinds of unkind comments regarding the President and his upcoming speech - from children.

When did they become so partisan?

As a kid, I didn't know the difference between Republicans and Democrats.  I didn't know that the two parties had different philosophies about governance.  What I did know - what I was taught - was that the President was a person of respect and should be treated as such.

Below is a portion of a blog post by Katie Granju.  It sums up my feeling of unease regarding this change in how kids feel about the Nation's highest office:

"The parents who raised hell about their kids seeing this speech at school are doing meaningful, fundamental damage to the glue that holds us all together as Americans, and they are contributing to a generational time-bomb of anti-American behavior and sentiment in the children they pulled out of class, or even out of school today. The thing that sets us apart as a nation and a society - what I see as the true American exceptionalism - is the fact that we are able to disagree so very passionately on the issues, while still holding tremendous, shared respect for our democratic ideals and institutions. This balancing act is not an easy one to pull off, but we Americans have done so pretty well for more than 200 years now. Our sense of shared patriotism generally allows us to rise above the things that divide us in respect for the things that unite us. And the office of the Presidency is one of the primary, iconic, uniting elements of American civic life. We Americans will continue to disagree on the issues. That's a given. But if we lose the ballast that our shared civic respect provides to counter our predictable disagreement, we will find ourselves pulled over a dangerous precipice."  Katie Granju

The entire post can be found here.