Obama's speech

I watched Obama's speech, and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed. Right now in our country of the U.S.A., there are stories of young adults not finishing high school or not attended college because they don't feel the need to. Personally, I think everyone should attend college in pursuit of a better job. For instance, in the 50's-80's, our country was trying its best to compete with others in terms of science and business. For example we created NASA and were able to land on the moon first, in the 80's we were able to generate computers, and new inventions were just spurring up. Recently, I've talked to a friend about NASA because she is interested in that field of work. But now she says that it's hard to get in because there is a low employment rate since the government isn't funding the advancement in space technology and education. The deduction from NASA's funding sets a standard to reduce all of science funding, therefore causing the youth to become less motivated to pursue this field of work. Personally, I rarely hear anything about scientific breakthroughs, all I hear about are the celebrities, movies/music, and controversial political stories. I feel like since we aren't progressing as fast as we want to, or that we can't compete with other countries, our economy is going down and people are becoming unmotivated and lazy to work hard for themselves. Therefore our country isn't doing great. Well enough about our current world, let's move onto Obama's speech.

His main audience were the students in Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, but more importantly the speech was meant for the youth in the U.S.A. Obama's use of personal stories helps him connect with his audience. He talks about his life in school and how he wasn't the best student in class. This really puts students into perspective about how everyone isn't perfect, even the president, and that they can try hard to get to successful places. Other useful tactics Obama used to connect with the audience is first by thanking everyone for being present, listing off some of the responsibilities of the students (taking care of the family, doing homework, having a job, school issues, etc), and especially specifying that he doesn't want to talk to the students like an ordinary adult during a boring lecture. This helps set the tone of a serious, hopeful, and motivational speech. Also this present that Obama is a very understanding and reasonable person, he knows what hardships people are going through (great use of pathos and ethos).

the argument made in this speech is that the education in the U.S. is falling behind globally and economically and we need to motivate our students somehow to do better in order to have a brighter future. Obama uses a lot of pathos to connect with his audience in terms of the hardships of a high school student. He further connects with his audience with personal stories and presenting little easy steps that they can take to become successful in the future, giving the students more incentives to try harder. The lax and casual diction of Obama's speech puts the students at ease and builds the relationship between him and the students. All of these ways to connect with the audience is to bring the audience to an understanding of what President Obama is arguing. This argument really relates to our current world because if we are able to achieve a higher education, better jobs will be pursued, technology and businesses will progress, and therefore the economy of the U.S.A. will improve.

Obama's great use of personal stories, ordinary people's stories, and motivational phrases are appealing to the audience. He said something about how people can make the Ipad seem like a stone tablet, becoming the next great American novelist, stated how U.S. is 16th in the world in getting a college degree, etc. These statistics and stories help bring people to realization that they can and should do something, to make their lives and country better.

I would like to end this post by talking about Obama's appearance in his speech. His somewhat stern but relaxed face made the speech serious, but not too serious, enough for high school students and older to listen. It's not like he was going to discipline people to doing bad things, it was more of like he's stating a problem that should be fixed and can be fixed. His tie was stripped gray, I don't really know if that means anything besides the fact that he's trying to be neutral with the audience and isn't setting some sort of superiority. His voice was very casual and it just seemed like he was talking to me face to face on a normal day. This makes him seem very presentable to any type of audience. The speed of his speech was moderate, not too fast or too slow. I think this shows that he has the patience to spend time with an issue that needs to be faced, besides politics. His smile and friendliness was very well moderated.

His motivational speeches about schools are always great. Students should really listen to them because they really pertain to our world right now.