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A motivational speech

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 8, 2009

The uproar over President Obama addressing the nation's schoolchildren to promote education is absolutely asinine.

For a country that is well down the international rankings for educating our students in math and science, I would hope that parents would embrace this opportunity to motivate their children. Instead, a large group of parents are rallying against the president's speech for purely partisan reasons.

Education (and knowledge acquisition in general) requires an open mind, and I have no doubt that these rallying parents, just by their partisan objections, have further closed the minds of their children. If, by some slim chance, "socialist ideology" seeps into a 15-minute speech and these parents fear that their children are impressionable enough to become socialists, then they should discuss interpretations of the speech with their kids afterwards.

But if the speech motivates even one child to stay in school or study harder, listening to the president is a small price.

DARREN CLAUWS

Tampa

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