Conservatives enjoy beating up on Michelle Obama, but if she spends her time in the White House, as she did yesterday, visiting high schools and
delivering this message to kids who will listen to what she is saying, it will be a very good thing.
Student: How did you get where are you?
MO: There was no magic. Parents working class, mother stayed home until I went to high school. Repeated some details of her background.
She told the kids, don't worry about what your friends say, or teachers who don't think you can do something. "Work hard, do your best."
She said: "I wanted an A, I wanted to be the person who had the right answers. People said, you talk like a white girl - I don't know what that means."
Mrs. Obama has a remarkable bully pulpit and she is planning to use it to reach out to students in Washington's troubled schools to deliver her message.
More talk about college and exploring options. Don't be a in a big rush to have children.
Pool was then led out to a room that houses the New Heights Teen Parent Program. For those not too familiar with DC, Anacostia High is one of the city's lower-performing schools, with regular violence and teenage parents in attendance. One of the signs on the wall listed baby supplies that can be acquired through the "Baby Bonus Bucks Redemption Program." There was also a sheet advertising the dates of the SATs.
Jocelyn Frye, FLOTUS's policy director, briefed the pool while we waited. Some direct quotes:
"One of the things she's spoken with all of us [about] is really reaching out to students who face challenges, not to necessarily, oh let's just touch the students who are doing the best. To visit schools that have challenges. But yet have a lotta opportunity and a lotta potential. And Anacostia was a place like that. There are other schools we could have gone to as well - where a lot of times students feel like people forget about them or don't really think that they have a lot of opportunity or potential. So we thought, well this a place to start."
"I thnk one of the things that happened when she went out to Mary's Center is a lot of students there were wondering, why are you here? And I think her point is that, don't think that we're so removed from you."
She wanted make sure the students know that "there was a time when we weren't all that different from you. So I th[i]nk this is part of the education policy, in the sense that we want to make sure that every school has students in it that believe that they can accmplish whatever they want. And believe that high standards are not something that's removed from them."
Let's face it - this is a message that will resonate much more with these kids when it comes from Michelle Obama than if it had come from Laura Bush or Hillary Clinton or any previous First Lady. Cheers to her for delivering it and I hope she carries out her promise to do more of such events.
7 comments:
I agree. It is nice to finally see Michelle Obama trying to send a positive message to people. If they did this more often, we conservatives would recognize this. At least I know I would. Problem is, this is the first time I have heard a story like this regarding MO. Hopefully we will hear more.
For years now I've read about how academic success has become demonized many urban blacks as somehow inauthentic and 'too white.' You're right to see that the Obamas could significantly change that attitude. If their example could give poor Americans (black or of any ethnicity) motivation to succeed academically, it could bring improvement to many lives. The Obamas could prove that a rising tide lifts all boats.
To borrow a MO riff, this is "the first time in my life...that I have been proud of this first lady."
She said some very good things here and we take note of them primarily because they seem to go against what has become the apologetic conventional wisdom on the matter. Doing so in Anacostia, one of DC's most horrific slums, was a good choice but I hope we have not lost sight of the recent decision by her own husband's administration to support Congressional Democrats as they destroy the District's school voucher program. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/24/AR2009022403815.html >
Michele Obama is a good mother to her children and her decision to send her girls to one of the best schools in the country is as commendable as it is evidence that she is both sane and practical when it comes to caring for her family. Now why is it that Congressional Democrats believe District mothers don't have the same desire for their children or is it that these plantation overseers,...er...Congressmen just don't care? The fact is that they are more concerned about placating the corrupt and bloated unions that have run DC's schools into the ground and stunted generations of residents, but hey, we're only talking about a bunch of black kids here, so who cares, right?
I'm no fan of the Obamas. But if MO will do this and keep at it she can really make a difference.
If, on the other hand, she ends up leading a secret commission to "reform" (translation: socialize) health care it will only confirm my negative opinion.
On the other hand, better qualified than BO, since she's at least seen the inside of a hospital even if it was a phony make-work position.
Good for her, I agree about .5% with what the Obamas say and do but this is in that .5%. She gets full credit for this.
Hey, aren't we "regressives" supposed to be about hate and bigotry? Oh, that's right. Bill B. and the rest don't know what they're talking about.
My silver lining, my only hope, from an Obama presidency is that it will put an end to the perpetual sense of victimhood and thuggish culture among the nation's African Americans.
This is a good sign, and I hope we see more.
While Ms. Obama brought celebrities to encourage DC's public schoolchildren, many of these same celebrities also endorsed eliminating DC's voucher and charter school programs.
It was just a photo-op.
cw/chsw
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