Obama's Speech

Overall, I thought that Obama's speech served its purpose: to motivate the nation's children to do well in school. In order to accomplish this goal, the president tried to connect failure in school to failing one's duties to the nation and, was, at times, very anecdotal. In other words, he tried to connect with students on an individual as well as on a universal level. Additionally, he used words that were emotionally loaded in order to motivate the nation's youth. However, in spite of the president's many attempts to connect with students, the speech was admittedly boring and dry. In many ways Obama employed the same style of speech that he employed on the campaign trail when running for president. Considering his audience, this was not necessarily a good idea. Children often do not have the attention span to listen to a long and bombastic speech. Given these mistakes in identifying audience, Obama did an excellent job of connecting with students on a personal level, using stories of children who were able to overcome adversity in order to succeed as well as stories from his own past to encourage students to put their best foot forward. Hopefully his speech inspired at least a few struggling students that education is essential and not to be taken lightly. If so, it was successful.