The partisan dustup over President Obama’s planned nationwide address to schoolchildren next week has inspired some speculation about what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot:

What if this were a Republican president, perhaps one named Bush, trying to drum up support for one of his programs? Would liberal school administrators even allow the kids to watch it? Would Democratic parents pull their children from the classroom that day?

Well, maybe we don’t have to guess. It turns out that then-President George H.W. Bush made a nationally televised speech to students on Oct. 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C., urging them to “make it your mission to get a good education” and to “block out the kids who think it’s not cool to be smart.” (The president’s sound bite of the day was apparently, “I can’t understand for the life of me what’s so great about being stupid.”)

Update: As a Palm Beach Post reader has helpfully pointed out, then-President Ronald Reagan spoke live to students nationwide in May 1986. And it seems that the first President Bush also made a 15-minute televised speech in 1989 urging students not to use drugs.

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