My Pet Goat
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"The Pet Goat" (often erroneously called "My Pet Goat") is a grade-school level reading exercise composed by American educationalist Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann. It achieved notoriety for being read by
US President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
with a class of second-graders on the morning of September 11, 2001. After being discreetly informed of the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
midway through the reading by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Bush waited quietly for the reading to finish before dealing with the unfolding crisis. The episode figures prominently in the retrospective assessment of Bush's response to the September 11 attacks.


Reading exercise

"The Pet Goat" was composed by Siegfried "Zig" Engelmann, who had written over a thousand similar instructional exercises since the 1970s. It was anthologized in the classroom
workbook Workbooks are paperback textbooks A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational i ...
''Reading Mastery: Rainbow Edition, Level 2, Storybook 1''. "The Pet Goat" is designed to teach student about words ending in the letter '' E'', using the
Direct Instruction Direct Instruction (DI) is a term for the explicit teaching of a skill-set using lectures or demonstrations of the material to students. A particular subset of direct instruction, denoted by capitalization as Direct Instruction, refers to a speci ...
(DI) teaching method. The exercise tells a story about a girl's pet goat, which her parents want to get rid of because it eats everything; the parents relent after it foils a
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by butting the intruder, who is now "sore" (that word ending in ''e'').


George W. Bush during the September 11 attacks

On September 11, 2001,
US President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United Stat ...
George W. Bush George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
went to
Emma E. Booker Elementary School Emma E. Booker Elementary School is a public elementary school in Sarasota, Florida, which opened in the fall of 1989. It is one of the Booker Schools, with a middle and high school of the same name nearby. It is a part of Sarasota County School ...
to meet students and staff and to bring attention to his plans for
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. Upon arriving at the
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school, the president was informed of the first plane crash into the
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, though he was briefed that it was probably just a small
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. While President Bush sat in Kay Daniels' classroom, and her students read "The Pet Goat", White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card interrupted the president to whisper in his ear: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack." Afterwards, the children continued to read and President Bush sat while—as described by ''
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''—"trying to keep under tight control." Despite the president's efforts, students knew something was wrong; they later said that the president's face became red and serious, and his expression was "flabbergasted, shocked, ndhorrified". According to
Bill Sammon Bill Sammon is a former managing editor and vice president for Fox News, as well as an author and newspaper columnist. He had previously worked as White House correspondent for ''The Washington Times'' and the ''Washington Examiner'' before joini ...
'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 Lawrence Ari Fleischer (born October 13, 1960) is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003. As press secretary in the Bush a ...
("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. Public attention to "The Pet Goat" first came to the fore with
Michael Moore Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism. Moore won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ' ...
's 2004 documentary ''
Fahrenheit 9/11 ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' is a 2004 American documentary film directed, written by, and starring filmmaker, director, political commentator and activist Michael Moore. The film takes a liberal, critical look at the presidency of George W. Bush, the w ...
'', 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.


Reactions

''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' 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''; the film presents the president as faltering in the face of the crisis. 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. On his own behalf, Bush said that "his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis. The national
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was standing behind the children in the classroom; he saw their phones and pagers start to ring. The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." Booker Elementary Principal Tose-Rigell supported the president's reactions at her school—"I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if
ush Uqturpan County, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency or Uchturpan County ( transliterated from ; ), also Wushi County (), is a county in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the administration of Aksu Prefecture and shar ...
had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"—as did Daniels' students, who later said that Bush's actions were the right ones. A year after the attacks, Kay Daniels' classroom still had the chair in which the president sat; it was festooned with a purple ribbon. 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."


Editions

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pet Goat animal tales children's short stories fiction about goats George W. Bush September 11 attacks