State of the Union Response

Well, for some reason it appears as if this post didn’t actually get posted to the blog the first time, so here goes for round two…

While the State of the Union address may have already been a little over a month ago, the issues and topics discussed are still extremely relevant and open for discussion. Many people seem to be thinking that the USA is on a slow decline and that everything in our country seems to be failing. This seems to be the general feel across the nation, but President Obama used his State of the Union address to help assure that this was not the case and that the United States was still the strong country that we have always been. While his speech was not focused on one main topic, there were definitely a few topics that he seemed to direct the majority of his time to, the first being on American innovation. I really liked his ideas on American innovation and his viewpoints on how America needs to be at the forefront of creating the world’s most advanced technology over a vast range of different fields. He declared that he would be sending a budget to Congress to invest in biomedical research, information technology, and clean energy technology. Being at the forefront of these fields will give the United States a large advantage amongst other nations and can cause for other nations to rely on us to get their information from the projects we create. President Obama compared American innovation to the space race. Obama said that we needed another “Sputnik moment,” referring to the time in history when the United States won the space race due to increased education and technology. I really liked this comparison that he made because it reminded listeners that the United States has gotten through similar situations before in which we have been behind in technology compared to other countries but have come back and used our knowledge and education to create bigger and better technology and succeed in out-smarting our competitors. Clean energy is something that is becoming extremely popular throughout the country, so hearing President Obama address it in his speech was not surprising at all. President Obama did something very interesting in his speech; he made a challenge to engineers and scientists across the nation to assemble their best teams to find better energy and said that the government would fund their projects. Not only does this help our country in having many people working to find better energy, but it is also giving many people a job and something to work towards. His goal was that by 2035, 80% of our country’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. While this may seem to be a hard goal to reach, if we are able to succeed in reaching it, I am very confident that the future of our country looks very bright. The last topic that President Obama talked about that he seemed to have an extremely large passion for was education. Although some people fail to recognize it, education is what runs this country. Without education, people wouldn’t have advanced degrees in their respective fields and wouldn’t be able to design and implement some of the technology that our country uses on a daily basis. Over the next 10 years, half of the jobs in the United States will require education beyond high school. This is a scary thing to think about because currently ¼ of students in America don’t graduate from high school, causing America to fall to 9^th in the world in the proportion of young people with a college degree. President Obama stressed the fact that success begins at home and that it is the parents’ responsibility to be on top of their kid’s schoolwork and to be encouraging them to be doing their homework and to focus on the “science fair vs. the super bowl.” Lastly, President Obama stressed the fact that our nation needs teachers. None of these educational improvements can be made without good teachers. Teachers deserve so much more respect than they are given because they really are the heroes of our society. Without teachers, children wouldn’t be able to learn and further succeed in their lives. My sister, Marissa, is studying to become a teacher, and I have been able to see through her experiences how difficult being a teacher actually is. In an ideal world, every student would be smart and not need any help from the teacher, but this is obviously not the case. Teachers have to be so patient and have so much compassion for their students and for their jobs that it is truly remarkable. Teachers truly make a difference in the life of a child, and it is because of that that I am in agreement with President Obama that our country needs good teachers. Rather than hearing a bunch of negatives and coming away from his speech thinking that our country is doomed, I came away from the State of the Union with a sense of optimism and hope. While our country does have a lot of things we need to improve upon, these improvements give me hope as to the nation we could become. By implementing these plans and making intelligent decisions, we can change America for the better, and therefore change the lives of all Americans.