The President's Reading Lesson

By Dennis Baron

One scene in Michael Moore’s documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" keeps playing in my head: George W. Bush placidly follows along as 2nd graders from Florida read a story called "The Pet Goat." Off camera, in New York City and Washington, planes are crashing into buildings. "The Pet Goat" is far from riveting, yet it keeps the president in his seat as the most devastating terrorist attack in the nation’s history unfolds.

George Bush went to the Emma E. Booker School in Sarasota on Sept. 11, 2001, to publicize his "No Child Left Behind" education initiative, the one (now a federal law) that’s supposed to turn around American schools. An amateur video of the president’s class visit, available on the Internet, begins with an aide whispering to Mr. Bush that the second plane has hit the towers. The tape runs another five minutes and eight seconds, though given the context it seems to last forever.

When I saw Mr. Moore’s film, I was appalled that the president stayed in the classroom and didn’t react to the emergency. He just watched as the students droned on about a girl and her goat. When I saw the Internet video, I was appalled as well at the mindless drill that passes for reading instruction in too many American schools. I saw not a class embracing the written word, exploring it and turning it inside out, but a class that’s learned to follow orders, to chant a story as if it were a list of words and not connected prose. I saw a class of...