All Posts Tagged With: "Barck Obama education"

President to urge students to ‘make us all proud,’ fulfil their educational responsibilities

Take responsibility for your education. Go to class and listen. Don’t let failures define you. That’s the advice President Barack Obama will give schoolchildren Tuesday in a speech that drew fire even before he delivered it.

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

The White House posted Obama’s remarks on its Web site Monday.

The president was to deliver the talk at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, a Washington suburb. The speech will be broadcast live on a cable television network and on the White House Web site.

In the prepared remarks, Obama tells young people that all the work of parents, educators and others won’t matter “unless you show up to those schools, pay attention to those teachers.”

Obama’s planned talk has proven controversial, with several conservative organizations and individuals accusing him of trying to pitch his arguments too aggressively in a local-education setting. White House officials, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have said the allegations are silly.

The president got a bit of a boost from former first lady Laura Bush, wife of Obama’s Republican predecessor George W. Bush, on Monday when she said she supported Obama’s decision to address the nation’s school children.

“There’s a place for the president of the United States to talk to school children and encourage school children” to stay in school, Mrs. Bush, a former school teacher, said in a CNN interview. However, she said believes that parents who were plan to keep their children home because of the president’s address had the right to do so.