Obama's Back To School Message

President Obama's back to school message to our country's students may have been overshadowed this week by his health care message to Congress, but to those of us who care deeply about the future of our society, it could not be more pertinent. The President spends most of his time grappling with issues in education on a very broad policy level. He, of course, should continue to do this, but it was very good to see that he recognizes that all his work - indeed, all work at any level above the classroom - is ultimately intended to serve individual students. And ultimately, education is a very personal endeavor.

Here are some of the take home points from Obama's Back To School message:

1. School helps you discover what you're good at. Sometimes you don't know what you're good at or what you like until you try. School - and high school in particular - is a place to try everything out. Everyone has preferences, but it's impossible to know what you prefer until you try a wider range of things. My sister, for example, never much liked studying languages. She took an American Sign Language class in college as a way of meeting her distribution requirements, and ended up majoring in ASL and becoming an interpreter.

2. You need to have an education for a good job. It's often a student's gripe that their coursework has no relevance to their lives, that they'll never use it in the "real world" (and as an aside, what's so un-real about school?), and so on. What they are often missing is that the process is itself a valuable thing that they are learning. And it is exactly these processes, what are often called "21st Century Skills" or "soft skills" that employers are most often seeking.

Or, if you'd rather, we can let the data speak for itself:

3. There is no excuse for not trying.  This may be the most important thing that Obama said.  While it is true that some people have certain social advantages over other people, nothing is insurmountable.  Each of our destinies lie in our own hands, and while we have to contend with the randomness and chaos of the universe from time to time, each of us ultimately charts our own course.  Our success in school and in life, though, depends on whether or not we try.  Or, in the words of a great 20th Century philosopher, you can make it if you try.

This sort of empowerment, the knowledge that each of our education is up to us, is at the same time a heavy responsibility.  Teachers, principals, administrators, Senators, Presidents, and tutoring companies will do everything they can to do set students up for success, but ultimately, the responsibility of education falls onto the shoulders of every student.