Obama's speech to the school children

I read nothing beforehand, so I didn’t have an opinion before I watched it. I personally thought it was a typical Obama speech. It was pretty much a pep talk. Step up to your responsibilities. You can do it! It wasn’t full of politics, which was nice. I didn’t find anything especially controversial about it, although the lesson plan that was supposed to go along with it was not good at all. People were raging on about that way more than the actual speech.

I don’t really think there were any moments in the speech where I was like, wow, I never thought of it that way before. But on the other hand, it was a pretty encouraging speech. It was really about that even if your circumstances stink, that’s no excuse to fail school. No matter how great your teachers are or how excited your parents are, you are the one who decides if you want to put in the time and effort. I think this speech was pretty good for school kids and that it really couldn’t cause any harm.

I think he appealed a lot to pathos by relating all his life experiences and the situations of those three other people he talked about. He wanted us to feel that he, the president of the United States of America, could relate with the average school kid, and that was pretty neat.