Jayeless

Row as Obama school speech looms

In the last week or so I’ve had trouble keeping up with current events (too much else to do!) but one thing I have gleaned is that there has been considerable debate in the US about whether or not Obama ought to give a speech “inspiring” children to care about their education. It seems that liberals, who tend to fawn over Obama’s every move, are all for the speech, whilst the Republicans are against it on the grounds it might indoctrinate children (…to care about their education…). On the Internet I’ve seen more than one American mocking the Republicans for their stand. Mocking the fear of indoctrination, or else joking that the Republicans want everyone to be uneducated because otherwise they’d have no support base. That kind of thing.

And I mean, I’m all for mocking Republicans, and fearing that Obama will actually brainwash kids would indeed be mildly ridiculous. However, dismissing all opposition to this speech as Republican paranoia seems, to me, equally ridiculous. For a start, I don’t much like the idea of this speech, and if you think I’m a Republican, you’ve got me all wrong.

I suppose it’s important here to point out that I’m not American. I’m Australian. In Australia, we don’t really look up to authority figures. Perhaps it’s grounded in our history. Allow convicted shoplifters to establish their own country and send some British soldiers to oppress them, and amazingly enough, the culture of the nation that results is pretty firmly anti-authoritarian. The idea of glorifying a leader to such an extent that they become a moral authority is quite abhorrent to me. Regardless of what that leader says. Leaders are PEOPLE, not amazing paragons of justice and right and goodness, but PEOPLE. The more you glorify them and treat them like they’re somehow more special, better, superior, whatever than the rest of us, the more you encourage everyone to defer to this leader, and the more you encourage the leader themselves to think of themselves as superior. And why the hell would you want that? Leaders are only people!

I’ll put it this way. If it was Kevin Rudd delivering this speech to the schoolchildren of Australia, and if we were forced to sit down and listen to him respectfully as he waffled on about his own education and about the “responsibility” we have to do what our parents and government and teachers ask of us, by learning, and by not “talking back” to our teachers, and by never coming “late” to class, and about everything else Obama put in his speech… I’d be pissed off. It’s not Kevin Rudd’s job to define morality; it’s his job to manage the federation. To preserve order between the states, to make sure everything that has to be done is indeed done, to maintain good relations with other countries, to ensure the economy ticks over and that there are jobs for people, to prepare for the challenges of the future (e.g. climate change, sustainability, pandemics)… not to tell individuals what they’re obligated to do! If anyone has the right to decide that it’s the individual themselves, not the government. And yes, while I agree it’d be nice for everyone to care about their education, WTF is with that crap about never talking back to our teachers? If my teacher is talking shit I’m going to tell them so. I’m not going to go, “OMG, but MY GLORIOUS LEADER says I have the RESPONSIBILITY not to do that! Better just let my teacher say what they want…” Hell no! Who the hell thinks that?? Oh right, Obama’s dream student…

Okay, I’m coming across as a lot angrier in this entry than I really am. It’s not like the speech is hideously abhorrent, no. I mean he could be giving a speech trying to incite Americans to hate some other nation, in preparation for going to go to war against them… leaders have done that in the past for sure. I remember from year 9 SOSE that as we went to war against Japan, Australia’s PM gave a speech about the “teeming millions” of Japan, like the Japanese weren’t a race of human beings but this mass of “millions” of inhuman things, ready to swarm across Asia all the way south to us. Those kinds of speeches are far more abhorrent than this one of Obama’s. I don’t really feel like “at least it’s not as bad as X” is a valid excuse for anything much, though. I look at snippets like this:

I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

— and I just go, “What the hell is this??” So wait, if I don’t achieve the absolute best that I can, I’m not just letting myself down, but MY ENTIRE COUNTRY?! Including the president?? Does the president seriously care that much about each individual’s education? I mean if everyone did well in academic pursuits, where would the US get the manpower from for its never-ending series of foreign conflicts? Is Obama saying that everyone who lacks academic ability — not just the military, but labourers, hairdressers, shopkeepers, cleaners, garbage collectors, and so on, people who all fill vital roles in society — are disappointments to America? Does he mean that? Because you know, that doesn’t sound very uplifting. Some people just aren’t much GOOD at academic things. I mean personally, I’m not much good at manual labour. Does that make me a better person than someone who, for instance, has a knack for mechanics but isn’t very academic? No, of course not. People can be good people regardless of what they’re good at.

To be fair, maybe Obama’s not fixated on academic ability; perhaps he only wants people to work hard at and be good at something, whether academic or not. All that talk of buckling down and studying didn’t give me that impression, but perhaps. Still I don’t really like the implied threats in his speech — like he’s saying, “Excel or you’re a disappointment to your country.” I doubt anyone will take it that seriously, but it’s not a very nice message.

No, I’m not worried that Obama is going to indoctrinate American children into anything. The issues I take with this speech are purely that I don’t like the moral message Obama is setting forth — that children have an obligation to their country to study and never talk back — and I don’t like that Obama has taken it upon himself to set forth a moral message in the first place. Furthermore, I don’t like the way those Obama fanatics are defending this speech by implying that all opposition to it is fear and paranoia. I’m not afraid or paranoid, I don’t think the speech will even achieve very much, but I don’t like the idea of it. Surely dislike is a possibility?

Sun, 13.09.2009, 4pm • 0 Comments • Tags: USA, propaganda, news, politics