What the President should have said

On Tuesday, the President gave a pretty good speech to school kids across the nation. If he honestly believed what he said, and if those beliefs were manifested through his actions as President, it’s doubtful he’d be facing the precipitous decline in his poll numbers.

Oh yeah…and he certainly wouldn’t be promoting yet another government entitlement program.

Tonight he stood before Congress and read from his teleprompters once again. If he really wanted to save his presidency, he could have taken the same speech he gave yesterday and adapted it to an adult audience. Something along the lines of the following. (The President’s words I’ve deleted are struck through, the words I’ve added are in bold.)

Click here to read this article without the strike through of remarks I’ve redacted from yesterday’s speech.

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The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia Congress in Washington, DC. And we’ve got students people tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade rich and poor, old and young. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning the high unemployment rate and our weak economy have you a little nervous.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school looking for work instead of working, having less money to spend on necessities and luxuries. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year as we work our way out of this recession.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education this economic crisis. And I’ve But I haven’t talked a lot about personal responsibility.
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you government helping you, and pushing but I haven’t talked to you to learn about helping yourselves.
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve. taking care of you, making sure nobody should be held responsible for their irresponsible actions.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents government, and the best schools intentions in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; stop viewing yourself as a victim; start asking yourself “what can I do to improve my life?”; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education station in life. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide that can make you successful.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team. Maybe you’ll have to start at the bottom, not at the top of the pay scale.  Maybe you’ll have to give up your bass boat, your all-terrain vehicle, your brand new pickup truck, or even your 52″ TV.   But over time, you can work yourself up the ladder and into a position to once again have those luxuries.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do be proud of yourself if you work for it, if you earn it through your own efforts instead of taking it from the mouths of others who earned it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school How you deal with your situation today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy that American spirit that lives somewhere within every one of us, that’s passed down from our founding fathers who came here for a better life and out of the wilderness created the greatest country in the world.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on you’re letting down your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school to step up and take responsibility for your own peace and security. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork take the risk, to step into the unknown when it seems more comfortable to stay put and let others foot the bill.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity realized what I’m asking you to realize and I did what it took to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have some of those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults family in your life who give you the support that you need you’d like. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework turning to crime, giving up looking for work, or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education lives and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education life – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as speaking to three potential employers today, to finding a job (even if it’s not the job you want) within the next week or month, or even to volunteer somewhere for a few hours a week to make yourself productive. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn help tutor kids at school, volunteer at your local animal shelter, or become a Big Brother or Sister. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn a job at McDonalds, Wal-Mart, or a local convenience store. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can can’t be rich and successful without any hard work — that your the only ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study job you have. You won’t click with every teacher foreman, supervisor, or boss. Not every homework job assignment will seem completely relevant to your life enjoyable or desirable right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade lose your job, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid unemployable, it just means you need to spend more time studying work hard at finding a new job, or even develop new skills to make yourself more marketable.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult someone you trust – a friend, a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor coworker – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.
It’s the story of students people who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students People who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn children, spouses, and parents are counting on you. But you’ve got to do your part too. So 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.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

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But that’s not what the President said. Instead he stood before America, read the lies scrolling acros his teleprompter, and once again insisted on the need for another huge government entitlement program. A program that will encourage fraud and abuse, and discourage personal responsibility.

But we didn’t really expect anything more.