The Pet Goat
"The Pet Goat" | |
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Short story by Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann | |
Genre(s) | Educational |
Publication |
"The Pet Goat" (often erroneously called "My Pet Goat") is a grade-school-level reading exercise composed by American educationalist Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. It achieved notoriety for being read by US President George W. Bush with a class of second-graders on the morning of September 11, 2001. After being discreetly informed of the September 11 attacks midway through the reading, Bush waited quietly for the reading to finish before responding to the unfolding crisis. The exercise has gained notoriety in the retrospective assessment of Bush's response to the September 11 attacks.
Reading exercise
"The Pet Goat" was composed by
George W. Bush during the September 11 attacks
On September 11, 2001,
Afterwards, the children continued to read and President Bush sat while—as described by The Wall Street Journal—"trying to keep under tight control."[2] Despite the president's efforts to remain stoic and not alarm the children, students knew something was wrong; they later said that the president's face became red and serious, and his expression was "flabbergasted, shocked, [and] horrified".[4]
According to Bill Sammon's book Fighting Back, Bush's gaze flitted about the room—the children, the press, the floor, his staff—while his mind raced about everything he did not yet know. After receiving cue-card advice from his press secretary, Ari Fleischer ("DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET"), the "notoriously punctual" president lingered in the classroom after the reading exercise was finished: he adamantly did not want to give an appearance of panic. After chatting with the students and their teacher, Bush deflected a Trade Center–related question from a reporter and began to learn about the magnitude of the attacks.[5]
Public attention to "The Pet Goat" first came to the fore with Michael Moore's 2004 documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, though the film incorrectly gave the title as "My Pet Goat" and called it a book. Within a few weeks, a blogger named Peter Smith tracked down the correct name and origin as a reading exercise by Engelmann.[1]
Reactions
The New Yorker described a seven-minute video of President Bush holding Reading Mastery while "staring blankly into space" as the most memorable bit in Fahrenheit 9/11;[1] the film presents the president as faltering in the face of the crisis.[2]
The commander-in-chief's supporters argued that there was nothing for Bush to do but wait for more information while not alarming the pupils.
A year after the attacks, Kay Daniels' classroom still had the chair in which the president sat; it was festooned with a purple ribbon.[3] By 2004, Engelmann (then a retired professor) was surprised at the attention "The Pet Goat" received: "It hasn't brought me any fame, [...] It's fascinating that anyone would even be interested in something like this."[2]
Editions
References
- ^ from the original on April 1, 2019. Retrieved September 12, 2019.
- ^ from the original on April 12, 2019. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
- ^ OCLC 5920090. Archived from the originalon November 14, 2012. Retrieved September 18, 2019.
A day promoting the president's education policy suddenly becomes a historical turning point.
- ^ from the original on March 9, 2019. Retrieved September 29, 2019.
They are in their teens now, but when they were second-graders, they shared the moment the President of the United States learned the country was under attack
- ISBN 0-89526-149-9.
- ^ "Staff Statement No. 17" (PDF), Improvising a Homeland Defense (After action report), National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, p. 22, archived (PDF) from the original on December 24, 2016, retrieved September 18, 2019