{"id":169,"date":"2009-09-07T21:28:08","date_gmt":"2009-09-07T21:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/09\/prepared-remarks-of-president-obama-back-to-school-event-you-decide.html"},"modified":"2009-09-07T21:28:08","modified_gmt":"2009-09-07T21:28:08","slug":"prepared-remarks-of-president-obama-back-to-school-event-you-decide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2009\/09\/prepared-remarks-of-president-obama-back-to-school-event-you-decide.html","title":{"rendered":"Prepared Remarks of President Obama Back to School Event: You Decide…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama
Back to School Event\u00a0via Whitehouse<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009<\/p>\n

The President: Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today?\u00a0I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.\u00a0And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade.\u00a0I’m glad you all could join us today.\u00a0<\/div>\n
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school.\u00a0And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous.\u00a0I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go.\u00a0And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.<\/div>\n
I know that feeling.\u00a0When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school.\u00a0So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early.\u00a0A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table.\u00a0But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”<\/div>\n
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school.\u00a0But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you.\u00a0I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education.\u00a0And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.<\/div>\n
I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.\u00a0<\/div>\n
I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.\u00a0<\/div>\n
I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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.\u00a0Unless 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.\u00a0<\/div>\n
And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.\u00a0I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Every single one of you has something you’re good at.\u00a0Every single one of you has something to offer.\u00a0And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.\u00a0That’s the opportunity an education can provide.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class.\u00a0Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class.\u00a0Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.<\/div>\n
And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.<\/div>\n
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future.\u00a0What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.\u00a0What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.\u00a0<\/div>\n
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment.\u00a0You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free.\u00a0You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.\u00a0<\/div>\n
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems.\u00a0If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school.\u00a0I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.<\/div>\n
I get it.\u00a0I know what that’s like.\u00a0My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had.\u00a0There were times when I missed having a father in my life.\u00a0There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.\u00a0<\/div>\n
So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been.\u00a0I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have.\u00a0And my life could have
\neasily taken a turn for the worse.\u00a0<\/div>\n
But I was fortunate.\u00a0I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams.\u00a0My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story.\u00a0Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much.\u00a0But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.<\/div>\n
Some of you might not have those advantages.\u00a0Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need.\u00a0Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around.\u00a0Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.\u00a0<\/div>\n
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude.\u00a0That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school.\u00a0That’s no excuse for not trying.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up.\u00a0No one’s written your destiny for you.\u00a0Here in America, you write your own destiny.\u00a0You make your own future.\u00a0<\/div>\n
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas.\u00a0Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school.\u00a0Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either.\u00a0But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.<\/div>\n
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three.\u00a0He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork.\u00a0But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.\u00a0<\/div>\n
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois.\u00a0Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.<\/div>\n
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you.\u00a0They faced challenges in their lives just like you do.\u00a0But they refused to give up.\u00a0They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves.\u00a0And I expect all of you to do the same.\u00a0<\/div>\n
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them.\u00a0Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book.\u00a0Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community.\u00a0Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn.\u00a0Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn.\u00a0And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.<\/div>\n
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it.\u00a0I want you to really work at it.\u00a0<\/div>\n
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.\u00a0<\/div>\n
But the truth is, being successful is hard.\u00a0You won’t love every subject you study.\u00a0You won’t click with every teacher.\u00a0Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute.\u00a0And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.<\/div>\n
That’s OK. \u00a0Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures.\u00a0JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published.\u00a0Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career.\u00a0But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life.\u00a0And that is why I succeed.”\u00a0<\/div>\n
These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you.\u00a0You have to let them show you what to do differently next time.\u00a0If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave.\u00a0If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.\u00a0<\/div>\n
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.\u00a0You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport.\u00a0You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song.\u00a0You’ve got to practice.\u00a0It’s the same with your schoolwork.\u00a0You 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.\u00a0<\/div>\n
Don’t be afraid to ask questions.\u00a0Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.\u00a0I do that every day.\u00a0Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.\u00a0It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new.\u00a0So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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.\u00a0Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.<\/div>\n
The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough.\u00a0It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.\u00a0<\/div>\n
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.\u00a0Students 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.\u00a0Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.<\/div>\n
So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be?\u00a0What problems are you going to solve?\u00a0What discoveries will you make?\u00a0What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions.\u00a0I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn.\u00a0But you’ve got to do your part too.\u00a0So I expect you to get serious this year.\u00a0I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do.\u00a0I expect great things from each of you.\u00a0So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down.\u00a0Make us all proud.\u00a0I know you can do it.<\/div>\n
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.<\/div>\n

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