OPINION: Puzzled by feedback to Obama’s speech

The prepared speech released on Monday, Sept. 7, makes a strong case for a strong wide-ranging education and calls for everyone to contribute to the effort. He called on parents, teachers, community and government leaders and especially the students themselves to devote themselves to the education process.

I urge you to read the speech for yourself athttp://www.whitehouse.gov/MediaResources/PreparedSchoolRemarks/

There are many parts of the president’s agenda that I find disagreeable. But it would not make sense to automatically disagree with everything he does simply because of my dislike for his liberalism. Nor am I convinced that the address in its final form is what he had originally intended it to be. It is possible that the strong public reaction to early reports of its contents caused a substantial rewrite of the speech. If so, it may mean that the president is starting to pay attention to the voice of the people.

Early education is especially important. If you work hard at learning to learn, then your education will continue throughout your lifetime. I learned a lot from all my teachers at Madison County High School, but two of them had the greatest influence on my life because they taught me how to learn and how to teach myself the things I needed to know. They were Miss Jeffie Fitzpatrick, who taught us math, and Doc. Powers, our science teacher.

We had three years of scheduled math at that time, but I needed another class to fill out my senior year and she suggested that I and another student take a fourth year of algebra in the back of her regular class. It was there that I learned to seek out answers on my own. I often wondered if I would ever make practical use of all that math. How was I to know then that I would wind up an a heavy artillery unit in the Georgia National guard computing firing coordinates?

Then in 1986, when I felt that we needed a different slant on local news and decided to start my own newspaper, I started with no formal training in journalism. I read some textbooks, picked the brains of several friends in the business and put out my first crude issues. The more I worked on the project the more I learned and the paper was eventually filled the need for which it was intended.

I am a great believer in personal responsibility. That is why I was pleased with the emphasis on the student’s responsibility for their own education reflected in the president’s speech. Now if we can only convince him that our adult citizens need to learn personal responsibility for the welfare of their families and themselves, there might be hope for his administration.

Frank Gillispie is the founder of The Madison County Journal. His email address is frankgillispie671@msn.com. His website can be accessed at http://frankgillespie.tripod.com/