TUCKER, Ga. – It’s no secret government schools have put President Obama on a pedestal unlike any other national leader.
Schools have been named after him long before his retirement or death, which is rather unprecedented. Students have been led in organized chants of his honored name. There are lesson plans comparing him to Abraham Lincoln.
But sometimes school employees take the rhetoric a bit too far and wind up in propaganda territory. The latest example comes from DeKalb County, Georgia.
For Black History Month, Livsey Elementary School created a cute display with the lines:
Rosa sat…so Martin could walk.
Martin walked…so Obama could run.
Obama ran…so our children could fly.
The jingle obviously refers to Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the display features their pictures. There’s no questions their actions forged a pathway for many black Americans to have decent lives, and for first-term Illinois Sen. Barack Obama to run for – and win – the presidency of the United States.
But Americans shouldn’t teach children that they need politicians of any stripe to be successful in life. In fact, they should know that President Obama’s is about to hand them - and successive generations – an astronomical national debt that they will have to deal with someday.
This deifying of Obama is unhealthy for our students because we’re teaching them to look to an individual – or government in general - for life solutions. If anything, today’s kids need to be reprogrammed to remember that they are the masters of their own destinies, and they themselves make the decisions that will ultimately determine the course of their lives.
As President John Adams said, we have “a government of laws, and not of men.” The unhealthy tendency to worship the people that temporarily fill government positions is a distraction for young people who should be focused on their own efforts to find their way in life.
Students need responsible parents and high quality teachers and educational options to be prepared for life, not pandering politicians or a nanny state that tells them what to eat for lunch, makes excuses for failing schools and defends subpar teachers.