>FWIW, I think trying to come up with a speech that's appropriate for grades K-12 is a pretty tough task.
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>Without a doubt - all the more reason why he shouldn't have done it.
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>I don't buy into the reaction that he was setting the stage for socialist indoctrination - quite frankly, he's not that good. It was just another silly P.R. move on his behalf (and it WAS a P.R. move)
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>Now, in fairness, he has a brief TV commercial where he speaks out to American dads to actually "be" American dads. That one made sense.

I disagree. It didn't come off as a PR move in the end. While I have no idea what his original intentions were, and I have no idea what the format of his original speech was (the administration is not releasing the original format - they will only say that the content was not substantially changed and I don't know what their idea of substantial is); I do know that the wording in the lesson plan changed. (How's that for a run-on sentence :o) There was all the fuss before-hand in the media just like there was when previous presidents did the same thing. Likely the fuss helped to de-politicize it :o)

However, the end result was a typical Presidential address to school children. Not that much different than any of the presidents who did the same before him. I have no problem with the current (or any president) addressing school children as long as the speech is limited to education and NOT partisan in any way. From what I heard when the speech was telecast, it was not partisan and was rather a good speech (although probably not very effective because as you wrote, it wasn't ideal for all those age groups). It probably would have been more effective had he given one speech for elementary school age kids, one for the middle school age kids, and one for high school age kids.