A remarkable little scandal erupted last week involving President Barack Obama's planned education message, to be delivered September 8 in public schools across the country by video. Many parents expressed their disapproval, based on an early release of the text and curriculum. Their objections were sparked because of some sections of the lesson plan which they thought seemed too political in nature to be delivered to a captive audience of school children. But what is even more remarkable is the news media backlash to these protests.

On Friday, September 4, NPR insouciantly ridiculed and mocked the protests in an unabashedly partisan fashion. In Wade Goodwyn's Obama's Schools Speech Faces Backlash, Goodwyn doesn't even try to be impartial in his report, even going so far as to accuse parents who oppose letting the government politically indoctrinate their children of not wanting to help the president improve public education. You won't find that in the transcript on the NPR website, you'll have to listen to the full 3 minute MP3 file to find it. Here's the problem with Goodwyn's biased report: he makes a straw man argument. There's no reason to believe any parent opposes the improvement of their child's education. But NPR would have us believe inserting left wing propaganda is improving public education.

So what in this whole situation could be considered political? You won't find out from the main stream media. The following stories would have us believe the only thing we need to know about the president's speech to school children is that they should work hard and stay in school. One of these is another NPR story:

• Obama's Speech Protests Examined
• White House Seeks To Tamp Schools Speech Furor
• Harwood: Opponents of Obama's School Invasion 'Not Smart Enough' To Raise Their Children
• Unwillingness to Have Obama in Classroom Symptom of Why Schoolchildren 'Are So Dumb Today,' Says MSNBC Guest

What you won't find in the main stream news media are the real reasons many parents protested. Part of the reason is because these objections have little if anything to do with the speech at all. That's part of the media manipulation, focusing all this public attention on the speech, which few if any one actually had a problem with. You can read the full text of the speech here: Text of President Obama's School Speech. The problem is with the curriculum the White House and Department of Education put together to accompany the speech.

To find out what is, or was since the curriculum was edited after the protests began, in the lesson plan that outraged so many parents you'll have to go to alternative news media. The Cato Institute's Gene Healy writes about the lesson plan in Hey, Mr. President, Leave Those Kids Alone:

The lesson plans Obama Department of Education officials came up with after several meetings with the White House make it clear that federal education bureaucrats should be kept as far away from children as possible.

One of the plans envisioned teachers making kindergartners write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. After parents rightly recoiled from that recommendation, the DOE tried to throw it down the memory hole, deleting it from their Web site.

Given some of the cultish questions that survived DOE's hasty revision, however, concerned parents can be pardoned a few overheated references to Kim Il-Sung:

How will [President Obama] inspire us?"

What is President Obama inspiring you to do?

Why is it important that we listen to the president and other elected officials?

These are question-begging questions, especially if you're one of those sensible Americans of all ages who aren't particularly inspired by President Obama, and who aren't convinced that listening raptly to elected officials is the best possible use of your time.

Worse still, the goofy pedagogical theory that informs DOE's lesson plans assumes that if we just get kids to express themselves about how a speech makes them feel, then they'll get smarter.

When they're old enough, in history class, kids ought to read and listen to presidential speeches like Ike's farewell address, LBJ's Great Society speech, Carter's malaise speech, and George W. Bush's second inaugural. And then they should be encouraged to dissect those speeches: What's the argument here? Is it convincing? We ought to ask kids to think critically about presidential rhetoric, instead of prodding them to burble appreciatively about his compassionate plans for everybody.

There is another "education" video being shown to public school students, entirely separate from the president's planned speech, titled "I pledge". I pledge features celebrities making politically partisan pledges. In Parents upset over 'leftist propaganda' video Lisa Schencker describes some aspects of the video.

Many pledges, such as supporting local food banks, smiling more, and caring for the elderly are noncontroversial. But other pledges, such as "to never give anyone the finger when I'm driving again," "to sell my obnoxious car and buy a hybrid" and to advance stem cell research cross the line, some say.

Do you see the problem? The celebrity video was not "just" about staying in school and working hard. There is social engineering going on here. It's not all bad social engineering, what with encouraging children to support local food banks and care for the elderly. But let's at least acknowledge this goes beyond mere education. Then there is the stuff about buying a hybrid and supporting stem cell research - how can any thinking person NOT see these statements relate to highly charged political issues?

Schencker's piece continues:

Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges included, "I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama," "I pledge allegiance to the funk, to the united funk of funkadelica," and pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.

"It's very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children," Ruzicka said. "If parents want their children to learn about those things and do them in the home, wonderful, fine, but it's not the place of the school to show a one-sided propaganda piece to children without parents knowing about it."

"They shouldn't be troubling our youth with the woes of the world and making them feel like we're in slavery or they have to worry about how many times they flush the toilet or if they have a plastic water bottle," Cieslewicz said, referring to pledges in the video to "end slavery."

Let's pose a hypothetical: "I pledge to be of service to George W. Bush." Now try to argue this is not a political statement, especially were it is to be delivered in a message to young students. Try to argue such a statement would not be met with widespread outrage by the very people saying there is nothing wrong with President Obama's message to students. That is partly what bothers so many conservative parents. People who see no problem with the "I pledge" video also seem to have no problem with the White House lesson plan that accompanied president Obama's back-to-school speech.

And no where in the main stream media are we being informed about the genuinely political and/or troubling aspects of the video or of the president's education message. Instead, we get more of the same loyal protection and obfuscation by left wing journalists trying to portray dissent as uncaring or racist, and alarmed parents as nincompoops who need government's help in properly raising their children.

Of the several news stories on NPR about the protests surrounding the president's speech I have yet to read or listen to one that actually tried to keep the public well informed. In every case so far (I admit I could have missed something) NPR wasn't even interested in being impartial - each story was designed to attack any opposition to the president's plans and to support the president in any and all aspects of his agenda. When was the last time you heard or read a story from NPR that supported anything President Bush tried to do?

This small scandal really doesn't merit this kind of media attention. There is tremendous left wing indoctrination in the public schools already. But the left-leaning news media chose to make this story a big deal, even if it wasn't the real story at all. The misrepresentation of conservative opinions and policies is standard procedure at NPR, and I'm afraid it has been for quite some time.