This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 8th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama will talk to school children today in a back-to-school address.

Yom McClosky Associate Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom,

an author of the book Feds in the classroom says the backlash against the President's

speech is just one symptom of the inherent conflict in government-run schools.

A lot of people have been really critical of the president for doing this address, bringing up all sorts of images of

totalitarian dictators who have children inculcated with ideas about who this person is, etc.

Katie Connolly at one of Newsweek blogs wrote,

What happened to classrooms as venues of learning where ideas are explained and

debated isn't it the exact job of schools to turn out young citizens who are

informed and engaged enough to be full participants in political discourse?

Since when should we be directing schools to shield children from history, politics, and culture?

If a speech by the President of the United States isn't a legitimate pedagogical device that I'm not sure what is,

no one is demanding that the President's words not be dissented from or challenged.

Indeed, working through differing views is a critical part of our educational process.

Well, I mean, one of the first things that you consider is a problem with that assessment

is that they put out study guides that start at pre-kindergarten.

Now I don't know many pre-kindergarteners or even kindergartners or

first second or third graders who really have the knowledge

they would need to critically interpret what their president is telling them.

So you're not dealing in reality when you say, well, we should have your four-year-old speak

...