The Organizer-in-Chief

By Henry Percy, September 2, 2009

Our Organizer-in-Chief will address students across America come September 8. In preparation for that teaching moment, Teaching Ambassador Fellows at the Department of Education have prepared a Menu of Classroom Activities to prepare the kiddies.

Here are a few of the leading questions:

Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials ...? Why is what they say important?

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

Well, as a parent and citizen, I wonder why there was no space for questions along the lines of this: "Why is it important for the President to listen to us, the people?"

In only 670 words, these Teaching Ambassador Fellows managed to use the word "president" 16 times (all but one of those refers to Obama). But why "the President" this and "the President" that? Why not "Our Dear Leader" or "Our Postracial, Self-Effacing, Maximum Leader"?

I had never heard of Teaching Ambassador Fellows, so I looked them up here. Pretty exclusive post: there are only 13 in the whole country. And why were they needed? Here's what the Department of Education says:

In recent years, a stronger spotlight has been cast on the importance of teachers in accelerating student academic achievement and dramatically improving education across America ... Teacher [sic] and parents also consistently indicate that when in need of information or ideas to help their students it is other teachers whom they most trust and are likely to turn [sic].

The second sentence is educationalese at its finest. How do you like your dangling modifiers?

And what will these Teaching Ambassador Fellows do?

The U.S. Department of Education designed the Teaching Ambassador Fellowship to enable outstanding teachers to learn about and bring their expertise to the national dialogue about education and in turn to facilitate the learning and input of other educators into education policy.

Remember President Reagan's suggestion that the Department of Education be abolished? Time to resuscitate that idea!

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a technical writer living in Arizona.