NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

 

 

Bush explains
learning to schoolchildren

 

"Childrens do learn," Bush tells school kids
Reuters Wednesday, 26 Sep tember 2007 / 2:03 p.m. ET

US President George W. Bush poses with children from Public School
76 after giving a progress report on his administration's "No Child
Left Behind" program at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.

NEW YORK — George Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up
at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize
the "No Child Left Behind Act," the centerpiece of his education
policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved
test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education
Secretary Margaret Spellings, plus teachers and about 20 fourth
and fifth graders from PS 76.

During his first presidential campaign, Bush — who promised
to be the "education president" — once asked: "Is our children
learning?"

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with
the same kind of grammatical twist.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn
when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush's diction in the official
transcript.

Bush is no stranger to verbal gaffes. He often acknowledges he
was no more than an average student in school and jokes about
his habit of mangling the English language.

Just a day earlier, the White House inadvertently showed how
it tries to prevent Bush from making even more slips of the
tongue than he already does.

As Bush addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday,
a marked-up draft of his speech briefly popped up on the UN
Website, complete with a phonetic pronunciation guide to get
him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.

If mangling the English language were his only sin,
we could almost feel sorry for the poor fellow.