President Obama’s Speech to Students

September 7, 2009 by JD · 2 Comments
Filed under: Musings, Politics, Success and Failure 

As you may, or may not, know, I no longer watch TV. That means that I no longer watch all the news shows and the Sunday morning political shows.

I find that I don’t miss all the bickering and misrepresentation that goes on and my life feels just a little more peaceful as a result.

So, I was pretty much unaware of President Obama’s scheduled speech to students in American classrooms until I saw tweets showing up (on Twitter, of course) saying that parents were being given the choice not to have their children watch the speech in their classrooms.

Now, that’s all I know about the controversy surrounding this, but it feels like more political wrangling and bickering more than anything else.

So, I went looking to see if the White House had released the text of the speech, and they have. Here are the Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009.

Being a somewhat thoughtful person who would rather respond to facts than react to vitriol, innuendo, and mischaracterizations, I read the speech for myself. The first time, I read it to understand the gist of it. The second time I read it, was to look for anything that might be objectionable. The third time was to enjoy the meaning of it.

I only wish I could write that well and be that inspirational.

Success is not easy. It takes a long time and lots of hard work, and education is a vital component in achieving the success we want.

Those who learn how to depend upon themselves for learning, who set goals and work to achieve them, and buckle down and keep working when the going gets tough are the people who will succeed at what they want to do.

We need more of these people.

When I was a student, I was complaining about one of my teachers and Mom told me, “The best teacher cannot teach someone who does not want to learn; the worst teacher cannot stop a dedicated student from mastering that subject.”

Now, my memory is dim on this, but I think she said that Martha Berry said that to the students when Mom was attending Berry Academy way back in the mid-20th century.

Tomorrow, President Obama will tell students across America this…

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools 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; 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. 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.

What parent would not want their child to hear the President of the United States of America address personal responsibility in such a way?

Why is this objectionable?

(Hang on a moment. I’m going to go and read that speech one last time…)

I’m back.

This paragraph jumped right off the page when I read it…

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 the American dream expressed in four short sentences.

We make our own future.

He will continue…

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life 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, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

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.

No matter what we want to accomplish with our lives, in order to be successful, we need to set goals for ourselves and then work to achieve each of those goals, one step at a time.

Find ways over, around, under, or through the obstacles that will show up in our path. Keep on trying until we succeed at what we want to do.

If you’re looking for the secret to success, “keep on trying” may not be the only secret, but it is a vital component.

That doesn’t mean we have to keep knocking our heads against a wall when we run into one. We have to evaluate our approach and our goal and where we are at the moment. Then, we need to apply our intellect, imagination, and experiences to the problem and try a new approach.

Keep on trying.

Everyone encounters obstacles that must be overcome…

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 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 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?

Finally, President Obama will challenge the students to do their best…

…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….

This is a great speech. It tells the truth about accomplishing what we want for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our country – and I might extend that to include our world.

It reminds the students that everything won’t be smooth sailing, but we can accomplish the things we set our minds to achieving.

It challenges each student to do his or her best – to be an asset rather than a liability.

I feel sorry for any child who is not allowed to watch President Obama address the students of our nation tomorrow.

Do you think there may be something objectionable in it? Then take a few minutes and read it for yourself…

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama, Back to School Event, Arlington, Virginia, September 8, 2009

Act on your dream!

JD

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