Popular Reformed Baptist pastor-theologian John Piper has weighed in on the School Speech Controversy. You may be surprised by what Piper has to say. Below is Piper’s recent blog post titled, I Hope My Daughter Hears The President’s Speech:
I am stunned at the outcry against the President of the United States speaking to the youth of this nation about the importance of education.
I am embarrassed by the governor of my home state saying, that the president’s plan to address them is “disruptive . . . uninvited . . . and number three . . . I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children.”
This speech seems, for me, to be an answer to a prayer that I have prayed for the president repeatedly.
Father, the condition of our schools and families is so broken that nothing seems to be working, especially for the poor in our urban centers. Help our president to have the courage to use his amazing place of influence to speak into this situation in such a way that boys and girls would take their studies seriously and put school above sport and homework above hiphop and graduation above gangs.
O, Lord, create a culture where it is not cool to fail. Give our President the courage to call all children, especially ones who feel hopeless about academic work, to fight for knowledge the way gangs fight for turf.
And as the President plans his speech, help him to feel as helpless as he really is to meet the greatest needs of the children, so that he turns to Jesus who alone has the answer for the ruin and the wrongs of our cities. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
I hope my daughter hears the speech.
Not all of Piper’s followers share his embarrassment. Here’s a sampling of the comments from the blog post:
Dr. Piper, your ministry of the word and the sovereignty of God and the supremacy of the Gospel hearkens back to the steel-spined faith and felicity of the Puritans, the Reformers, the Fathers, and the Apostles. Your biblical precision is a grace-generated work indeed. Thus, it is with regret that when you step into areas that lay outside your immediate expertise, you undermine your Gospel credibility with what I perceive to be ill-thought, ill-read, ill-conceived reasoning.
How can you be so blind? Obama’s purpose ins not to encourage, it is to indoctrinate! Like Hitler, he wants to grab the youth of our country to “serve” him. It’s propaganda aimed at the most innocent amoung us…. and you want your daughter made into his ‘servant”. Isn’t Obama suppose to be s public servant, and not the other way around? You comments are as scary as what our presicent is trying to do to our country. I have no desire for my children, or grandcrildren to be indoctrinated into socialism, or communism.
Ya, I’m sorry but you just dropped about twenty floors in the ‘Building of Respect’ for me. There aren’t many places were I separate from people who disagree with what I believe in scripturally, but you just crossed that threshold. I know I am a small person, and not quite the Icon as you, but just know, I find this new information on you more than just disturbing, but a real disappointment.
Dr. Piper, I really love and respect many of the things you are trying to accomplish for the Kingdom, but I respectfully believe that its pretty arrogant to claim that God is answering your prayer. Are you really praying that a homosexualist, pro-death, anti-Israel President get the opportunity to speak to the Nation’s youth on the value of indoctrination, er, education? My prayer is that as many parents as possible will protest with their feet and refuse to submit to the Leader’s indoctrination talk on the value of education without moral authority. I am embarassed that you are embarassed and I hope that God equips parents to resist Caesar. Like you, I could say something completely self-serving that the outcry of like-minded parents is a direct answer to MY prayers and the prayers of many others.
You get the picture.
Kudos to John Piper.
We live in a kooky world and the kooks are getting louder and louder. It’s difficult for a reasonable person to wrap their mind around all of this anger. I recently attended a Health Care Townhall held by Rep. Chet Edwards at the Waco Convention Center. The townhall was at 10am on a Saturday morning. Over 1,000 Waco-area folks were in attendance. I’ve never been around so many angry people in a non-football setting. Hundreds and hundreds of generally older white men and white women completely drunk with anger. Folks are angry over health care reform. Now, it’s this speech to school children.
What’s next week?
Optimistic that this public school speech will be a huge success for the administration, I see the potential for several future Obama speeches which will target the public to prop up other faltering government industries
The Postal Service speech will be pumped in by video to all public and private businesses, encouraging citizens to stay with the snail mail system and spurn UPS, FedEx and the web;
The Public Option Healthcare Insurance speech, pumped in to doctors’ offices, hospital rooms, lobbies, and waiting rooms encouraging sick consumers to jilt their private carriers for “Comrade Care” and enjoy mini-series videos while they wait for their emergency appendectomies;
The Social Security speech–for that wonderful government monstrosity aptly named by the first word only–will pump up guys like us who will continue to have the privilege of paying into a system which won’t provide any security by the time we need it. Remember to perish and banish forever the option that we might invest some of those dollars ourselves!
All brought to you without commercial interruptions! Except for the Government Television Network’s pilot episode of “Dancing with the Czars.”
As much as it sickens me to do it, I agree with Big Daddy Weave on this one. I read the speech. If that is Obama’s attempt at indoctrination, he sucks at it. Yes, there were liberal buzz words “…protect the environment…end discrimination…” but they were disconnected from their typical wacked out liberal agenda. Personally, I thought it was a good speech and I agree that kids need to focus on school and take responsibility for themselves.
Now that I’ve agreed with you I need to go bathe with some lye soap and gargle with some hydrochloric acid to get that taste out of my mouth.
The President’s staff developed teaching/resource material corresponding to his speech.
And this is a big deal?
Is this where I yawn, roll my eyes, then grin?
Pastors develop sermon outlines for their listeners to aid comprehension of the sermon.
You want to use The Wall Street Journal in your class? Sure. You get a a great rate! And it comes with teaching/resource material, too.
Wish to listen to a DVD lecture by a prominent individual. Great. What are sigificant people asserting, one asks. And when a group is through listening, it might consider the teaching/resource material that is included on the DVD.
Child going off to school? Great. “Hey, son, take this list of phone numbers; they might be helpful.” “Thanks; perhaps they will, Mom.”
Yeah, it is getting kind of crazy out there. I heard the speech. It was a good speech, right in the middle of what I was hoping it would be about. No complaint here.
Tim
Nice thing about homeschooling: My children were learning to read and write.
My point, before anyone misunderstands it: IMHO schools do far too much preempting of actual classroom instruction. When my wife (B.S.E., M.S.E.) was teaching for a government school in the area, out of a seven hour day she had a grand total of 45 minutes available to her in which her entire class was in the room for instruction. The remainder went to PE, computer, Accelerated Reading, remedial pullouts (I know they use different terminology now), library time, etc., etc., etc.
Four hours of homeschooling takes half as much time, gets four times as much done, and my son is already half a year ahead.
The fact is that kids aren’t the only ones with ADD these days—some instructors and administrators are pretty easily distracted from the basics as well, IMHO.
But, that’s my opinion, and I’m thankful that I have the liberty to educate my children according to what I see as the best outcome for them, and that others have the liberty to do likewise or the diametrical opposite.
My wife teaches first grade in a “government” school.
They teach the basics, are focused on the basics. One teacher, 23 kids, Title 1 school, lower-income, many immigrants, children begin with limited English skills. Last year EVERY student in my wife’s class could read at the appropriate level by the end of the year. The school scored Exemplary under the Texas accountability standards.
I see the kids, the teachers, and their excellent principal regularly (help out with chess club one afternoon a week). Teachers/administrators don’t strike me as having ADD, but rather as doing a very good job under very challenging circumstances.
Totally impressed with what this “government” school does and would hate to think what the country would become without it and others like it.
Obama’s blatant attempt to politicize the school rooms was pushed back, and he was forced to give a plain vanilla speech.
Liberals can pretend that the administration didn’t send out curriculum instructing students to write about how they ‘can help the President’.
But it did send it out, and had to pull it back.
No, the issue isn’t the speech he eventually made.
It’s what he wanted to do when he hoped no one would object.
In this case I have to disagree with John Piper, and that shocks me. But I believe that the original speech and accompanying hand-outs had to be watered down when there was an outcry. What Mr. Obama said in this speech was basically just fine….but it also opened the door for future speeches. After a few speeches, parents will drop their guard, figure it’s just another speech, harmless, he’s done it before, and slowly but surely the indoctrination will begin. Like the frog in the pot as they turn up the heat, no one will notice till it’s too late that the water is boiling and death is imminent….