Back to School Event
Arlington, Virginia
September 8, 2009
The President: Hello everyone how s everybody doing today? I m here with
students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we ve got
students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade.
I m glad you all could join us today.
I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of
you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it s your first day in
a new school, so it s understandable if you re a little nervous. I imagine
there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with
just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you re in, some of you are
probably wishing it were still summer, and you could ve stayed in bed just a
little longer this morning.
I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few
years, and my mother didn t have the money to send me where all the American
kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday
through Friday at 4:30 in the morning.
Now I wasn t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I d fall
asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I d complain, my mother
would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me
either, buster."
So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I m here
today because I have something important to discuss with you. I m here because
I want to talk with you about your education and what s expected of all of you
in this new school year.
Now I ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I ve talked a lot about
responsibility.
I ve talked about your teachers responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing
you to learn.
I ve talked about your parents responsibility for making sure you stay on
track, and get your homework done, and don t spend every waking hour in front
of the TV or with that Xbox.
I ve talked a lot about your government s responsibility for setting high
standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that
aren t working where students aren t getting the opportunities they deserve.
But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most
supportive parents, and the best schools in the world and none of it will
matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to
those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents,
grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.
And that s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has
for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to
yourself.
Every single one of you has something you re good at. Every single one of you
has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover
what that is. That s the opportunity an education can provide.
Maybe you could be a good writer maybe even good enough to write a book or
articles in a newspaper but you might not know it until you write a paper for
your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor maybe even
good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine but
you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you
could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not
know that until you join student government or the debate team.
And no matter what you want to do with your life I guarantee that you ll need
an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police
officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our
military? You re going to need a good education for every single one of those
careers. You can t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You ve got
to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn t just important for your own life and your own future. What you
make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this
country. What you re learning in school today will determine whether we as a
nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and
math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy
technologies and protect our environment. You ll need the insights and critical
thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and
homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more
free. You ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes
to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect
so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don t do that if
you quit on school you re not just quitting on yourself, you re quitting on
your country.
Now I know it s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have
challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your
schoolwork.
I get it. I know what that s like. My father left my family when I was two
years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay
the bills and wasn t always able to give us things the other kids had. There
were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I
was lonely and felt like I didn t fit in.
So I wasn t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I m not
proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have
easily taken a turn for the worse.
But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to
go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady
Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to
college, and they didn t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard,
so that she could go to the best schools in this country.
Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don t have adults in
your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family
has lost their job, and there s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live
in a neighborhood where you don t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring
you to do things you know aren t right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life what you look like,
where you come from, how much money you have, what you ve got going on at home
that s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That
s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out
of school. That s no excuse for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn t have to determine where you ll end up. No one s
written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You
make your own future.
That s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn t speak English
when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college,
and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good
grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school,
studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who s fought
brain cancer since he was three. He s endured all sorts of treatments and
surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer
hundreds of extra hours to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and
he s headed to college this fall.
And then there s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even
when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods,
she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep
young people out of gangs; and she s on track to graduate high school with
honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren t any different from any of you. They faced
challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They
chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves.
And I expect all of you to do the same.
That s why today, I m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your
education and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be
something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or
spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you ll decide to get involved in
an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you ll
decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they
are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a
safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you ll decide to take better care of
yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you
ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don t feel
well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really
work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and
successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through
rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you re not
going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won t love every subject you
study. You won t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will
seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won t
necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
That s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who ve
had the most failures. JK Rowling s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve
times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high
school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of
shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and
over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
These people succeeded because they understand that you can t let your failures
define you you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what
to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn t mean you re a
troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad
grade, that doesn t mean you re stupid, it just means you need to spend more
time studying.
No one s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard
work. You re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don
t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You ve got to practice. It s
the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times
before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand
it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it s good enough to hand in.
Don t be afraid to ask questions. Don t be afraid to ask for help when you need
it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn t a sign of weakness, it s a sign
of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don t know
something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust a parent,
grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor and ask them to help you stay on
track to meet your goals.
And even when you re struggling, even when you re discouraged, and you feel
like other people have given up on you don t ever give up on yourself.
Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.
The story of America isn t about people who quit when things got tough. It s
about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much
to do anything less than their best.
It s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to
wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75
years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil
rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago
who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate
with each other.
So today, I want to ask you, what s your contribution going to be? What
problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a
president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what
all of you did for this country?
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure
you have the education you need to answer these questions. I m working hard to
fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need
to learn. But you ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious
this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I
expect great things from each of you. So don t let us down don t let your
family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do
it.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.