Obama tells students: Discover new passions

Bill Turque
The Washington Post
September 28, 2011

For an incumbent president facing a tough reelection campaign, no public appearance is completely free of political content. But President Obama’s annual back-to-school speech to the nation’s students, delivered Wednesday at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Northwest Washington, was about as close as it gets.

In a 20-minute address to Banneker’s 415 students, streamed live to schools across the country by the White House, Obama urged students to take their work seriously but also to experiment.

“That’s what school’s for. Discovering new passions,” Obama said, speaking under the basketball backboard in a packed gym turned steamy from the extra lighting.

“That’s why one hour you can be an artist; the next, an author; the next, a scientist,” he said. “Or a historian. Or a carpenter. This is the time when you can try out new interests and test new ideas.”

Obama told students he didn’t want to be “another adult who stands up to lecture you like you’re just kids,” prefacing a series of fairly lecture-like remarks.

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