mmilliken@heraldsun.com; 419-6684
DURHAM — Some Durham voices have joined the chorus of critics of a televised speech that President Barack Obama will deliver to American schoolchildren Tuesday.
The White House press release on the speech says that Obama will discuss “the importance of taking responsibility for their education, challenging [students] to set goals and do everything they can to succeed.”
The president has asked schools to air the address live to students. Carl Harris, superintendent for the Durham public school system, said it is up to leaders of individual schools in the district whether or not to show Obama’s address to students.
But some local Republican observers are concerned that the president’s message won’t be age-appropriate.
“The concept of campaigning to young malleable minds doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, from either standpoint,” said John Lloyd, an active Durham County Republican Party member who served on the City Council from 1991-95. “From the kids’ standpoint, they’re not voters, they won’t be for a while, and from Obama’s standpoint, they’re not voters and they won’t be for a while. It’s kind of hard to understand why he would want to do that.”
Lloyd said he wouldn’t able to view any president’s speech as nonpartisan until that president has built a track record of working with both parties — a credential he feels Obama does not have.
Although Obama is slated to give an unusual joint speech on health care to both houses of Congress Wednesday evening, Lloyd was suspicious about the president’s addressing a different field.
“The timing is kind of interesting,” said Lloyd, who owns a company that installs and maintains electronic equipment. “At a time when lots of attention has been gleaned to his health care proposals, which haven’t been going well, for him to change subjects now when everybody’s aware that his focus is on health care strikes me as a little disingenuous.”
Charlotte Woods, a member of the Republican Party executive committees for Durham County, the 4th Congressional District and the state, is also leery of Obama’s speech.
“I think that I would not say that it’s inappropriate for the president of the United States to address school children,” she said. “I think the issue that I’m hearing the most parents are concerned about is exactly what is he going to be saying.”
Woods is concerned that the president will use Tuesday’s address to forward a socialist agenda.
“I think he definitely has tendencies towards socialism,” she said. “And that’s the part that bothers all the parents. That is just not the place for it [in schools].”
Woods said her 9-year-old granddaughter, who attends Orange County public schools, had urged her to vote for Obama because her teacher had indicated that he was the only politician who doesn’t lie. That’s made her leery of politics in public schools, she asserted.
Tom Stark, an attorney who is vice chairman of the county Republicans, would be content with Obama’s message if it tracks with its announced topic.
“You wonder what his agenda is,” Stark said. “I think it’s great to say to kids that you can go anywhere you want to go if you get a quality education and that education is the key to a successful future and build them up on that. I am concerned if it’s to try to indoctrinate them with this basically socialist policy that we’ve been seeing unfold in this country and apparently a very partisan approach to politics where the idea is that you’re going to cram a bunch of unwanted policies down people’s throats.”
