[Strangler Lewis]

I suppose I would prefer to see any essay topics phrased as "How I Can Help My Country/State/City" than how I can help any particular office holder. I think, however, that the only way that opposition to this event can be principled rather than paranoid is if you think that no president has any business addressing school children about anything. This means no "How can I help President Bush/America win the war on terror," no "How can I help President Roosevelt/America win World War II" Etc. It probably also means no civics or, rather, no teaching of civic responsibility, since people clearly differ on how much we should be allowed to depend on/intrude on one another.

When I was in Fourth Grade, my teacher's adult son was shot and nearly killed in a mugging in New York City. The substitute, or maybe the principal, made us all write letters to Mayor Lindsay, Governor Rockefeller and, I believe, the New York City Chief of Police asking them to make the streets safer. My mother still has Mayor Lindsay's response framed, and I thought it was pretty cool at the time.

On the other hand, perhaps the whole project was inappropriate. There was probably an implicit racist cast to the whole undertaking since New York city crime was inevitably about the blacks and the Puerto Ricans. There were probably sophisticated union issues involved that fourth graders had no business weighing in on, and Lindsay had enough problems with the unions.