I just finished reading the text of President Obama’s speech to schoochildren that he’s planning to deliver today, the first day of school for many children in America. As I expected, there’s a glaring absence of political content. He exhorts students to stay in school, find out what they’re good at, be responsible citizens, etc. He also re-tells my favorite story from the campaign about getting up at 4:30 in the morning to study with his mother and her answer to his complaints, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

But what I love most about this speech is the following bit of unassuming prose: “You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.”

Knowledge. Problem-solving skills. Insights. Critical thinking skills. Creativity. Ingenuity. All things that are critically important in today’s world and all in woefully short supply in this country. In fact, the debate over the speech itself demonstrates just how little some Americans engage in critical thinking in particular.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of watching President Nixon resign his office. I was six years old, roughly the age my daughter is now. We were at the state fair in New Jersey, where we lived at the time. I remember being told to be quiet because the President was making an important speech. But my parents didn’t just hush me and protect me. They explained to me, in words a child could understand, what was happening and why they felt the resignation was significant.

All my young life, my father engaged me on the issues. He loved (and still does) to debate with me, challenging my views and making me think more deeply about my positions. Nothing drew more scorn from him than saying I’d heard it somewhere and therefore believed it. Simply put, he taught me to think for myself.

That, more than anything else, is what bothers me the most about the controversy regarding the President’s address. It’s not that people have different political views that I do. It’s not even that some parents would rather their child be excused from viewing the speech. That’s their right. It’s that an entire segment of the population is blindly, unquestioningly following a few noisy, lazy, ignorant people to whom critical thinking, logic and introspection are anathema.

That kind of blind obedience to anyone, be it God, Jesus or a radio talk show host, scares the wits out of me. Life is questioning. Life is seeking. Life is learning. Without those things, it’s just a long, boring slog to the end of the line. Who would choose to live like that?