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Originally Posted by pan6467
I still believe it is wrong. I don't believe in politicizing children, especially at school. It still smells of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and so on. Call it what you will, but the past has taught us the great tyrants in the modern age have used the children to get across their "message".
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No, I disagree. Here is one take on this aspect that I agree with:
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"As far as I am concerned, this is not civics education -- it gives the appearance of creating a cult of personality," said Oklahoma Republican state Sen. Steve Russell. "This is something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq."
No, it isn't. In those totalitarian regimes, the government would require attendance. Here it's not compulsory for students, schools or school district. In fact, there is a whiff of authoritarianism in the knee-jerk decision by some red-state school districts to summarily ban the speech even though some teachers might want to show it and some students might benefit from it.
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Nothing to fear but politics itself | BlueRidgeNow.com | Times-News Online | Hendersonville, NC
And the closing remark of the article puts it into perspective, especially considering what we now know about the speech:
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If, instead of taking on the matters of congressional politics that dominate the news, he admonishes school children to respect their parents and teachers, pay attention in class, do their homework and pull up their britches, well, maybe that's the sort of "propaganda" that schoolchildren today could use.
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Just because a politician aims to get a "message" across to children, it doesn't automatically mean they're trying to build an army of fascist youth.
I think American schoolchildren need some serious inspiration today. Haven't they fallen far enough behind already?