In school today, a lesson in propaganda

President Obama is going to be addressing our schoolchildren today. Reading through the provided pre-address materials leaves me distinctly uneasy.

I'm a parent of two high schoolers and two middle schoolers. While I applaud any effort by elected officials to encourage students and motivate excellence in public education, the preparatory materials suggest that this particular message will cross the line into not-so-subtle indoctrination, in intent and fact.

Sections of the activities for older students read like a creepy exercise in the crafting of a cult of personality.

For example, students are encouraged to review (specifically) President Obama's quotes on education. Perhaps the government could publish them in a Little Red Book format for easy reference?

Several points of the preparatory materials read like a primer on collectivization -- community and country goals, posted publicly with "group" monitoring of progress. Some examples:

"Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants, puzzle pieces, or trails marked with the following labels: personal, academic, community, and country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in that area. It might make sense to focus first on personal and academic goals, so that community and country goals can be more readily created."

"Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. Teachers would collect and redistribute these letters at an appropriate later date to enable students to monitor their progress."

"Write goals on colored index cards or precut designs to post around the classroom."

"Interview one another and share goals with the class to create a supportive community."

We could even assign certain students to monitor these goals, and help make sure everyone is progressing cheerfully. Not sure what we would call them; maybe we could just use the historical title, "commissar."

It's one thing to have "fireside chats" in the public media, for review and discussion. It's entirely different to have a presentation in a school setting where the authority-geography is different. The school context is inherently unequal.

It's one thing to have a discussion among peers, but another to have a government-delivered monologue in a setting where source credibility is assumed, and questioning -- even if conducted later in controlled small-group settings -- is limited or absent.

If the schools insist on airing this address, I would likewise insist that the educational discussions that follow also review critical listening, the history of propaganda, the concept of "begged questions" in rhetorical presentation, and the role of the media in a democracy.

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Steve Lieb of Cologne, Minn., is a corporate logistics manager.

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