In response, the White House today released a transcript of the full speech on the web. The move should hardly be surprising: the White House website provides a direct means of communication for the administration that skips the media entirely.
The debate itself is irrelevant to our topic area, but we were somewhat interested to see that Obama praises the founders of tech companies - specifically Twitter, Facebook and Google - as the kind of people school children should emulate:
"The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough...It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other."
But while Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Biz Stone and Ev Williams are praised as this generation's great innovators, Microsoft loses out to Apple in the commendations: students are encouraged to invent the "next iPhone" and not to "spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox". Ouch. ;)