President Obama Makes Historic Speech to America's Students - English subtitles

Hello everyone, thank you, thank you, thank you everyone, okay everyone, go ahead and have a seat, how is everyone today? How about Tim Spicer? I'm here with

students

from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia, and we have

students

tuning in from all over the United States. from kindergarten to 12th grade and I'm so glad that everyone was able to join us today and I want to thank Wakefield for being such an exceptional host, give it a big round now. I know that for many of you today is the first day of school and for those of you who are in kindergarten or starting middle or high school, it is your first day at a new school, so it is understandable if you are a little nervous.

I imagine there are some seniors who are feeling pretty good right now, with only one more year to go. Go and no matter what grade you are in, some of you are probably wishing it was still summer and you could have stayed in bed a little longer this morning. I know that feeling when I was young, my family lived abroad, uh, I lived in Indonesia for a few years and my mother didn't have the money to send me to the school where all the American kids went, but she thought it was important for me to support myself. up to date with American educational education, so he decided to teach me additional lessons. herself from Monday to Friday, but since she had to go to work the only time she could do it was at 4:30 in the morning, as you can imagine, she was not very happy about getting up so early many times.

I fell asleep right there at the kitchen table, but every time I complained, my mom would give me one of those looks and say this isn't easy for me either, Buster, so I know some of you are still upset. They are adjusting to being back. at school but I'm here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I am here because I want to talk to you about your education and what is expected of all of you in this new school year. I have given a lot.

speech

es about education and I have talked a lot about responsibility.

I have talked about the responsibility of teachers to inspire students and push them to learn. I've talked about your parents' responsibility to make sure you stay on track and do your homework and don't. Don't spend all your waking hours in front of the TV or the Xbox. I've talked a lot about your government's responsibility to set high standards and support teachers and principles and improve broken schools where students don't get the opportunities they deserve, but at the end of the day we can have the most dedicated teachers. , the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world and none of that will make a difference, none of that will matter unless you all fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools unless you pay attention to those teachers Unless you listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults and work hard to succeed, that is what I want to focus on today, the responsibility each of you have for your education.

I want to start with the responsibility that you have to yourselves, each of you has something that you are good at, each of you has something to offer and you have the responsibility to yourself to find out what it is, that is the opportunity for an education. can provide maybe you could be a great writer maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper, but you might not know until you write that English paper, that English class paper that you were assigned , maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or the new drug or vaccine, but you might not know until you do your project for your science class, maybe you could be a mayor, senator or Supreme Court justice, but you may not know it until you join the student government or the debate team and no matter what you want to do with your life, I guarantee you will need an education to do it.

You want to be a doctor, teacher or police officer. If you want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military, you will need a good education for each of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just get a good job. train for it, work for it and learn for it, and this is not only important for your own life and your own future, what you do with your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country, the future of America depends on you. What you are learning in school today will determine whether we, as a nation, can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You will need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and mathematics to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS and develop new energy technologies and protect our environment, you will need the knowledge and critical thinking skills you gain in history and Social Studies To fight poverty, homelessness, crime, and discrimination and make our nation fairer and freer, you will 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 each of you to develop your talents, your skills and your intellect so that you can help us old people solve our most difficult problems if you don't.

Don't do that, if you give up on school, you are not only giving up on yourself, but you are giving up on your country. I know it's not always easy to do well in school. I know many of you have challenges in your lives right now that may make it difficult to focus on school work. I understand. I know how it is that my father left my family when I was 2 years old and I was raised by a single mother who had to work and who sometimes struggled to pay the bills and was not always able to give us the things that other children had.

There were times. when I missed having a father in my life there were times when I felt alone and I felt like I didn't fit in so I wasn't always as focused as I should have been in school and I did some things that I'm not proud of and I I got into more trouble than I should have and my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse, but I was lucky to have made it. many second chances and I 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 many opportunities. money, but they worked hard and she worked hard to be able to go to the best schools in this country. Some of you may not have those advantages, maybe you don't have adults in your life to give you the support you need, maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there isn't enough money to go around, maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don't feel safe or you have friends who pressure you to do things that you know are not right, but at the end of the day the circumstances of your life how you see yourself where you come from how much money you have what happens at home none of that is an excuse to neglect your homework or have a bad attitude at school that's no excuse for talking back to your teacher or skipping class or dropping out of school there's no excuse not to try where you are now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up no one has written your destiny for you. you because here in the United States you write yours.

Destiny is created by your own future. That's what young people like you do every day all over America. Young people like Jasmine Pérez from Roma Texas. Jasmine didn't speak English when she started school. Neither of her parents had gone to college, but she worked hard. She earned good grades and earned a scholarship to Brown University and now she is in graduate school studying Public Health on her way to becoming Dr. Jasmine Perez. I'm thinking of Andon Schulz of Los Angeles, California, who has battled brain cancer since he was three years old and has endured it all. kinds 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 was never far behind.

He's headed to college this fall and then there's Shantel Steve from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois, even as he bounces around. From foster home to foster home in the city's toughest neighborhoods, he managed to get a job at a local healthcare facility, started a program to keep youth out of gangs, and is on track to graduate from school. high school with honors and go to university. and Jasmine, Doni and Shantel are no different from any of you, they face challenges in their lives just like you, in some cases they have it much worse than many of you, but they refused to give up, they chose to. take responsibility for your lives, for your education and set goals for yourself and I hope that all of you do the same, so today I call on each of you to set your own goals for your education and do everything you can. to fulfill them.

Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework while paying attention in class or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity or volunteer in your community. Maybe you decide to stand up for children who are being targeted. of teasing or harassment for who they are or how they look because you believe, like me, that all young people deserve a safe environment to study and learn, maybe you will decide to take better care of yourself so you can be smarter to learn and in that sense certainly I hope all of you wash your hands a lot and stay home from school when you're not feeling well so that we can prevent people from getting the flu this fall winter, but whatever. you decide to do it I want you to commit I want you to really work at it I know sometimes television gives you that feeling that you can be rich and successful without any hard work that your ticket to success is through rap or basketball or being a star reality show, most likely you are not going to be any of those things, the truth is that being successful is difficult, you will not love all the subjects you study, you will not fit in with all the teachers, you will not have all the assignments.

The task will seem completely relevant to your life at the moment and you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try it. Okay, some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who have had the most failures. JK Rawlings who wrote Harry Potter his first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career but once said I have failed again and again again and again in my life and that is why I succeeded.

These people were successful because they understood that you can't let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get into trouble, that doesn't mean you're a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to act right. If you have a bad grave, that doesn't mean you're stupid, it just means you should spend more time studying. No one is born good at all things, you become good at things through hard work you are not a college athlete the first time you play a new sport you don't hit all the notes the first time you sing a song you have to do practice The same principle applies to your school work.

You may have to solve a math problem several times before you get it right. You may have to read something several times before you understand it. You definitely have to make some drafts of a paper before it is ready. ready good enough to deliver don't be afraid to ask questions don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it I make it a point every day to ask for help is not a sign of weakness it's a sign of strength because it shows You have the courage to admit when you don't know something and that allows you to learn something new, so find an adult you trust—a parent, grandparent, teacher, coach, or counselor—and ask them to help you stay on track. to achieve your goals and even when you are struggling, even when you are discouraged and feel like other people have given up, never give up because when you give up, you give up on your country.

American history is not about people who quit when the going 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 young students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a depression and won a world war who fought for rights civilians and put a man on the moon students who sat how you sit 20 years ago he founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other, so today I want to ask all of you what your contribution will be, what problems they will solve, what discoveries they will make, whatwill be a

president

who comes here in 20, 50 or 100 years, says what all of you did for this country, you know your families, your teachers and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to respond these questions.

I'm working hard. to fix up their classrooms and get them the books, equipment and computers they need to learn, but they also have to do their part, so I hope you all get serious this year. I hope you do your best. In 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 down, above all, don't let yourselves down, make us all proud, thank you all so much, God bless them. God bless America thank you