Commentary: School officials denied Obama the dignity of office

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By Mary McCarty, Staff Writer Updated 1:51 AM Thursday, September 10, 2009

Did you catch that part in President Obama’s speech where he urged the youth of America to form terrorist cells?

That was great, but not nearly as inspiring as the part where he exhorted them to finance their education through drug-dealing.

You somehow missed that part, too?

Well, there was lots of other inflammatory stuff, such as when he told the kids “if you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.”

Fortunately, most local students were shielded from incendiary statements such as “work hard” and “wash your hands.”

From all the uproar over the president’s address to our nation’s schoolchildren, you would have thought him to be a suspected al-Qaida recruiter instead of leader of the free world.

In today’s climate, it’s not surprising some parents, egged on by talk-show hosts and bloggers, would react that way. What’s shameful is the way that most school officials caved in to their demands. Many districts — including Kettering, Fairborn, Springboro and Beavercreek — said they needed to “screen” the speech before giving teachers the option of airing it, even though the White House released the full text the day before. I’m not aware of any local district in which the broadcast was shown in all classrooms, as it was in Columbus public schools, where officials flatly stated they don’t give students the choice to “opt out of the curriculum.”

Oakwood schools offered all students the chance to watch the broadcast during their lunch hour. “There was no reason not to give them the option,” said Oakwood Superintendent Mary Jo Scalzo. Only about a dozen students stayed for the broadcast in the high school auditorium, while some 60 students — some with their parents — watched at each elementary school.

Senior Amanda Catalano, 17, observed, “I’m not his biggest fan, but he’s our president, and I wanted to hear what he has to say.”

Scalzo said concerned parents — split 50/50 on the issue — seemed satisfied with the optional broadcast. Kettering interim Superintendent Jim Schoenlein said the district’s phones have been ringing off the hook with opinions also about evenly divided. “We have tried to listen to the views of all of our parents to reach a middle ground,” Schoenlein said.

None of my three kids, all attending Kettering public schools, has been given the chance to watch the broadcast or re-broadcast. Where’s the middle ground in that?

Despite the low turnout (most kids went home for lunch) Oakwood High School Principal Paul Waller believes it was a good decision to air the broadcast: “He’s the leader of our country and students should be given the right to listen to him. It reminds me of a quote I once heard: ‘Our job is to foster society, not to reflect it.’”

Nobody raised a ruckus when Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush spoke to our nation’s schoolchildren, but when Obama attempts a similar address — benign to the point of banality — he is charged with “creating a firestorm.” It’s a double standard that smacks of racism, however unintended it may be.

“I don’t think it’s so much a racial thing as this country is politically polarized,” Schoenlein observed. “And we’re stuck in the middle.”

He may be right but here’s the bottom line: America’s first black president wasn’t given the fundamental respect, the dignity of office, that would have been accorded any other president before him.

That’s a message too many of our local districts failed to screen properly — and one that’s impossible to take back.

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