WASHINGTON — Take responsibility for your education. Go to class and listen. Don’t let failures define you.

That’s the advice President Barack Obama gave schoolchildren today in a speech that drew fire even before he delivered it.

“We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems,” Obama said. “If you don’t do that — if you quit on school — you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.”

The White House posted Obama’s remarks on its Web site Monday.

The president delivered the talk at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., a Washington suburb. The speech was broadcast live on C-SPAN and on the White House Web site.

Students at Madison Elementary School in Coos Bay missed President Obama’s speech this morning, but Principal Arlene Roblan has plans to let them see it if they want to.

She recorded the president’s message and plans to screen it later this week.

Any student or parent who doesn’t want to see the recording can opt out, Roblan said. She’s heard from two parents, one who said not to show the speech, the other asking that it definitely be aired.

Superintendent Bob De La Vergne sent an e-mail to teachers, telling them it’s up to them to show the speech, though students can ask not to watch.

“Broadcasting of the President’s speech is at the discretion of the classroom teacher,” his e-mail said. “If you choose to broadcast the speech, please have an alternative activity planned for those students who choose to opt out.”

In the prepared remarks, Obama tells young people that all the work of parents, educators and others won’t matter “unless you show up to those schools, pay attention to those teachers.”

Obama’s planned talk has proven controversial, with several conservative organizations and individuals accusing him of trying to pitch his arguments too aggressively in a local-education setting. White House officials, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, have said the allegations are silly.

Obama makes no reference in his prepared remarks to the uproar surrounding his speech. Nor does he make an appeal for support for tough causes such as his health care overhaul. He uses the talk to tell kids about his at-times clumsy ways as a child and to urge them to set goals and work hard to achieve them.

“I think it is a very good speech,” Loudoun County, Va., school superintendent Edgar Hatrick told WTOP News in Washington, “but it’s just not on the first day of school very convenient for everybody to stop in the middle of lunch and to stop everything else they’re doing and hear the live broadcast.”

Pittsburgh Public Schools Superintendent Mark Roosevelt told KDKA Radio: “If the president wants to speak to the students of America and talk about the importance of academic achievement and working hard, that is a wonderful thing and ought not to be the subject of debate.”

— World Staff Writer Alexander Rich contributed to this story