Obama, at Brooklyn School, Pushes Education Agenda
resident Obama on Friday visited the innovative Brooklyn high school he praised in his State of the Union address this year, to deliver a message about the urgency of education reform in the global economy.
Mr. Obama, dressed in shirt sleeves, was showered with cheers by the visibly energized students and a cadre of New York politicians as he took the podium at Pathways in Technology Early College High School. “Hello Brooklyn,” he said, before starting into his argument for creating more schools like the one he was visiting, casting them as essential in preparing the next generation for competition in a shrinking world marketplace.
“This country should be doing everything in our power to give more kids the chance to go to schools just like this one,” the president said, calling the school, known as P-Tech, a ticket into the middle class.
“In previous generations, America’s standing economically was so much higher than everybody else’s that we didn’t have a lot of competition,” he added. “Now, you’ve got billions of people from Beijing to Bangalore to Moscow, all of whom are competing with you directly. And they’re — those countries are working every day, to out-educate and outcompete us.”