WASHINGTON – The furor surrounding President Barack Obama’s upcoming address to the nation’s schoolchildren is “just silly,” his education chief said Sunday, and a conservative senator who led the Education Department in the first Bush administration suggested teachers make it a civics lesson.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s department has taken heat for proposed lesson plans distributed to accompany Tuesday’s speech. He acknowledged that a section about writing to the president on how students can help him meet education goals was poorly worded. It has been changed.

Debate about conservative objections to the speech has dominated cable television and talk radio for several days, signaling again the stark divisions in the country both over politics and social issues.

Some opponents to the speech claim Obama would try to indoctrinate schoolchildren with what they call his “socialist” agenda.

“That’s just silly. They can go to school. They can not watch. It’s just, you know, going an 18-minute speech,” Duncan said.

He said Obama had no intention beyond talking “about personal responsibility and challenging students to take their education very, very seriously.”

Sen. Lamar Alexander, education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, said he understood “some of the concern, because, you know, people say, `Oh, here’s another Washington takeover.’

“But of course the president of the United States should be able to address students. And of course, parents and teachers should decide in what context,” said Alexander, R-Tenn.

He added, “If I were a teacher, I’d take advantage of it, and I’d put up Lincoln and Eisenhower and Reagan and teach about the presidency, and then I’d put up the head of North Korea and say, ‘In that country, you go to jail if you criticize the president. In our country, you have a constitutional right to do it.”‘

Duncan said the guides distributed to schools “were put out by teachers, for teachers. And there is one that wasn’t worded quite correctly. It was talking about helping the president hit his goal of having the highest percent of college graduates by 2020. He’s drawn a line in the sand in that.

“We just clarified that to say write a letter about your own goals and what you’re going to do to achieve those goals. So again it’s really about personal responsibility and being accountable, setting real goals and having the work ethic to see them through,” the secretary said.

Declaring that viewing the speech is “purely voluntary,” Duncan said the hubbub is something “I frankly don’t pay any attention to.” Rather, he said, he is focused “laser-like” on the big problems in the U.S. education system.

The secretary said the speech text will be posted on the White House Web site on Monday.

“There’s nothing political about it, and it’s a shame that some people have tried to politicize it,” Obama adviser David Axelrod added.

Duncan spoke on CBS’ “Face the Nation” and Alexander appeared on “Fox News Sunday.” Axelrod was on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the economy won’t improve without the billions of dollars for schools in President Barack Obama’s recovery plan.

Duncan told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday that the nation needs a better-educated work force to revive the economy. He said it’s the only way to get out of the economic crisis in the long term.

Obama’s economic stimulus bill cleared the House Wednesday. Critics say much of its $140 billion for schools is not a short-term boost but an immense expansion that will be impossible to roll back.

Duncan said the measure will protect kids by saving teachers’ jobs and by building and renovating schools. It also includes money for reforms related to teaching and student tests.

WASHINGTON – President-elect Barack Obama had just one disclaimer when he announced former pro-basketball player Arne Duncan as his education secretary: “I did not select Arne because he’s one of the best basketball players I know.”

Still, he conceded, “I will say that I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history.”

Not that they’d have much competition from the likes of John Foster Dulles, Henry Kissinger or Janet Reno.

“Over the presidencies of the 20th century there were Golf Cabinets, there were Poker Cabinets, and even I suppose Tennis Cabinets,” said John Sayle Watterson, author of “The Games Presidents Play: Sports and the Presidency.”

But basketball, he said, is a first. “I think this is sort of an updating of that.”

Obama is an enthusiastic player who picked up the game in junior high and became known as “Barry O’Bomber” in high school. You might even call the presidency his backup choice. He told Barbara Walters he dreamed of going pro until he realized he wasn’t good enough.

Duncan, a regular at Obama’s pickup games, can do him one-better. He co-captained the Harvard basketball team and played professionally in Australia before becoming the head of the Chicago school system.

Obama’s choice for national security adviser, James L. Jones, was a forward at Georgetown. Incoming Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner hates to miss a pickup game. Eric Holder and Susan Rice, incoming attorney general and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, both played ball in high school.

Obama also plays with top adviser Robert Gibbs, Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias – who played professionally in Greece – and personal aide Reggie Love, who played on a Duke team that won an NCAA title.

Legend has it that Obama even played with former Princeton star and now Oregon State coach Craig Robinson to win his approval while Obama was courting his wife, Michelle, who is Robinson’s sister.

The basketball court is clearly a place where Obama develops rapport. But it’s also a proving ground for the kinds of skills a leader needs, said Dave Czesniuk of the Center for the Study of

Sport in Society at Northeastern University in Boston.

“I think there’s a lot to be said for folks who managed participating in sports with academics, with part-time jobs, with family commitments,” he said. “There are time-management skills involved and certainly social development skills and confidence, self-esteem building as well as the ability to deal with difficult situations.”

All the presidents’ sports aren’t mere diversions. One of Theodore Roosevelt’s most enduring legacies – national parks – stemmed from his love of hiking and hunting. Roosevelt often invited his Tennis Cabinet to join him in daily exercise.

William Howard Taft had his Golf Cabinet, and Warren Harding spent plenty of time on the green when he wasn’t meeting with his Poker Cabinet. His weekly poker games at the White House were a place for dealmaking and forging relationships. (Future president Herbert Hoover, however, refused to play.)

Others have been less overt. Gerald Ford downplayed his all-star football past to avoid being seen as a dumb jock, Watterson said.

The elder George Bush played baseball and soccer at Yale and was “maybe the best athlete of the 20th century presidents,” Watterson added, but still had a reputation as a buttoned-down Ivy Leaguer.

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter both played basketball, but not into adulthood. And certainly neither assembled a sports dream team for his Cabinet.

President George W. Bush did ask at least one potential Supreme Court nominee about his exercise routine. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the president recommended more cross-training.

But even the Old Boys couldn’t keep up with Obama’s club. What does that mean for Hillary Clinton or Janet Napolitano?

“Probably Hillary’s not going to be on the basketball court, nor are other women who are either in the Cabinet or sub-cabinet posts, but I don’t think it will affect his relationship with them,” Watterson said. “I can’t imagine that basketball is going to be in any sense the way golf was to a previous generation, say with Dwight Eisenhower.”

Hillary Clinton did play half-court basketball growing up, when only the boys played full-court. But who says she doesn’t have game?

Clinton enlisted Earvin “Magic” Johnson to sink a metaphoric hook shot against Obama in the primaries. In a radio spot, Johnson recalled his first year as a professional basketball player, when his team captain advised him: “Take it easy rookie, it’s a long season” – a jab at Obama’s relative lack of experience.

As long as Obama gets a good mix of backgrounds, political views and, yes, athletic abilities in his Cabinet, basketball should remain an “active, dynamic, positive force” in his administration, Czesniuk said.

It may even have a side benefit with the press.

“It’ll be something that will give them something to write about or distract them from the other problems that Obama is facing. It’s a little like the Obamas choosing the school for their daughter, a dog,” Watterson said. “It’ll all be very interesting because it will all be very new.”