There is no better spokesperson for the value of education than President Barack Obama, but Conservatives, already in a frenzy, want no part of it. "Brainwashing!" they shout. It's sad to see so many Americans divorced from reality. Tony Perkins has not read any data on preventing teens from dropping out of school. Talking to high school kids is too late. Everyone with a high school education knows this. Oh, and I guess he just missed the president's push to improve our schools.

From TP:

For the past few days, conservatives have been freaking out over President Obama’s upcoming speech to schoolchildren on the first day of school. Though Obama’s speech will be about “persisting and succeeding in school,” the right wing is claiming it is about “school indoctrination” just like “what Chairman Mao did.”

On Fox News this morning, NPR’s Juan Williams defended Obama’s effort as “innocuous,” saying that “on the face of it, it seems to be almost patriotic…you should hear the president speak about the value of education, staying in school, hard work.” But Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wasn’t convinced that the speech would be benign. To buttress his argument, Perkins asserted that “the president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration”:

PERKINS: It is unprecedented in the fact that there’s a worksheet attached with this, that there’s homework involved here. And Juan has to admit that the question of write a letter to yourself on how you can help the president does raise some questions as to whether or not he could have gotten into the policy issues. The president really hasn’t pushed any educational reform issues yet in his administration. He’s been busy with other controversial things. But you know, going to elementary kids to talk about drop out. What about high school kids? That is a little — it raises some questions.