Obama's Speech to School Children

In my freshman writing class, it's often a hard sell to get the students to take seriously the "individual learning plan" assignment, a series of essays in which students evaluate the results of a diagnostic pretest, and make a plan for how to use the various course resources in order to build on their strengths and develop new ones.

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. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe 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. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn.

Students who have made it all the way to college are, of course, a self-selected group. But since freshman writing is a regular part of my teaching load, I often encounter students who struggle to make the transition to a self-directed learning environment, where all the work is optional, but the bills that come at the end of a wasted semester are all too real.

Maybe you don't have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there's not enough money to go around. Maybe 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.

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. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying.

[...]

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.

Hmm... weren't most of the leaders of the American war for independence actually educated overseas?  Looks like a good strategy -- including, on the list of great achievements, the social networking tools that students know well.