Student Reactions to Obama Speech on Education

In class today we spent a significant amount of time focusing on President Obama's education speech, delivered yesterday to k-12 students across the United States. Although we are in Canada, I felt that the message contained in the President's speech was universal and certainly relevant to the message I try to pass along to my students.

Before viewing the footage, we discussed what we thought the message might be, and the key words that the President was likely to focus on. There was an incredible amount of class participation as words such as education, school, learning, students, studying, and curriculum were suggested as possible focal points of the speech.

As we listened to the speech, the students listened attentively and took notes. I was hoping that the President's message would stimulate a productive conversation, and I wasn't disappointed. Many of my students felt that the most significant point was "not letting failure get in the way of your goals", while others felt that an incredible amount of pressure was being placed on students when President Obama said "If you quit on school you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country." A handful of students identified what I felt was a key point of the speech, when the President challenged students by asking "What's your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve?" (A full transcript of the speech can be found here.)

I find it fascinating that a group of Canadian students would be so transfixed on a message being delivered by the president of a foreign country. I wasn't sure how this activity would go, but I think one of my students summed things up best when he said "When the President of the United States speaks to us, we need to listen."

Apparently some people weren't as open to this idea, and some refused to hear the President's message, but I for one am glad that we had a chance to be a part of it.