I had just picked up my grandson from school the other day when I heard President Obama was planning to speak to students across the nation in a televised address. I immediately brought to my mind’s eye twice in the past when presidents spoke to schoolchildren; my eldest daughter remembers getting to watch Reagan’s 1988 speech from her middle school class, and my sons were in elementary school when George H.W. Bush addressed students.

Last week, I told my six year-old grandson that, just like his mom and uncles before him, he’d get a chance to see an American president speak on TV to kids like him. He nodded, showing me that he had at least heard part of what I said, and returned to playing with his Batman toys.

Here’s what my grandson knows about the president: his name. He knows nothing about the president’s fiscal policy, his stance on women’s issues, or the economic philosophies on either side of the health care debate. He’s six. He knows more about Bruce Wayne than he does about Barack Obama.

Twenty years ago, my daughter didn’t know anything about Reagan’s taxation philosophy, and my young sons couldn’t have told you the political party to which Bush was a member. What they heard, and the only thing they remember these 20-odd years later, was the elected leader of their country speak to them, telling them that working hard and staying in school was cool.

Fast-forward to the present, two decades of supposed progress later. Thanks to the lack of true leadership from Polk School District’s Central Office, my grandson was denied the option of listening to the President of the United States of America speak to students. That’s right, it wasn’t even an option.

Originally, PSD said the president’s address would not be heard in any of its schools. Later, after a verbatim script of the speech was released by the White House, Central Office issued a paltry half-turnaround, with the superintendent passing the buck to principals, who in turn, it was decided, would have to make the decision whether to show the speech. In the event a principal decided “yes,” signed permission slips would be mandated.

That’s laughable on the face of it—a permission slip needed to listen to the head of state—but then, regardless of that, the permission slips never came. No principal (that I am aware of) was able to draft, copy, and send home enough permission slips by Friday afternoon, which (due to the Labor Day holiday) would have to be returned Tuesday, the very day of the speech, for it to even matter. It simply wasn’t possible.

So with the mandate of signed permission slips to watch the president’s speech coupled with said permission slips never having been sent home, the speech was effectively blacked-out from PSD, and our children missed what ended up being a very positive, non-partisan, motivational address.

I guess the kids will just have to take our word for it.

Shame on the two groups involved that made this issue what it is.

First, those reactionary parents who, regardless of political affiliation, called Central Office in the first place, showcasing their xenophobia on a grand scale with the blanket convenience of fearing the “brainwashing” of their children.

While they fear their children may be indoctrinated with “socialist” ideas like goal-setting, hard work, academic rigor and school attendance, these Manchurian Candidates will believe anything they read in a forwarded email to be the Gospel: that the president is a Communist, Muslim, atheist, Scientologist, Antichrist, et cetera, ad nauseam. It’s not even partisan politics; it’s blind hatred toward an individual first, and however they can focus and justify their hatred, an unimportant, unnecessary second.

And rather than cast off their fluff as the bemoaning of a select handful of reactionaries, PSD actually took their collective voices and transmuted it into a district-wide mandate. Central Office, a group that should know better because they are paid to know better, acquiesced to the agenda of the reactionaries; and this Central Office, usually so eager to micromanage, decided to wash their hands of whole mess by passing the buck to the principals; principals who in turn would serve as scapegoats should more parents complain.

Such arrogance and cowardice are rarely so evident.

Now PSD has established precedent. I ask that PSD implement the following policies, in keeping with the spirit of the new precedent:

Permission slips are to be sent home any time this president (or any future president) intends to address students during the school day.

Furthermore, permission slips are to be sent home every time a commissioner or state representative visits a school; these elected officials should release a complete text of their prepared statements ahead of time, and only students who return permission slips will be allowed to remain in the class.

Permission slips may also be home once every four years (following the inauguration of a new president) so that parents can decide whether their children will pledge allegiance to a country where “President (Insert Name Here)” is the head of state.

Permission slips must also be handed out daily and brought back signed the following day in the event a teacher, guest speaker, or fellow classmate may potentially say something that may cause any other student to question, inquire, or debate a social, political, or moral point, or, in the case of what we saw last week, simply ask the student to set goals and work hard.

See how absolutely ridiculous that sounds? See how absolutely ridiculous it was last week?

If ignorance is truly bliss, I pity those who called Central Office to demand their children not watch to the president’s speech; but this type of people exists in every society, and their acrimonious contempt for people they refuse to even try to understand will continue until they have passed on from this earth. They will not change. They do not anger me as much as they sadden me.

What does anger me is that our Central Office, a group composed of learned academics and former administrators who should know better, sold-out and caved-in to the demands of a fringe mob, and then conveniently washing their hands of the matter by setting-up our administrators and selling-out our children.

When it comes to taking a real stand, this Central Office has shown it has the vertebrae of a jellyfish.

Gerald Elbridge, Cedartown