Barack Obama will today tell US schoolchildren to work hard and fulfil their responsibilities to themselves and their country, in a speech criticised in advance for being too political and prompting conservative calls for parents and schools to boycott the address.
The president will tell children during a visit to a school in Arlington, Virginia: "At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world, and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfil your responsibilities."
"Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures," he will say. "JK Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected 12 times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, 'I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Source: here