dead presidents

So, today is President's Day.

(I am old enough to remember when we celebrated both Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, instead of mooshing all the presidents - good, bad, and indifferent - into a single day for honoring. I sort of wonder if in 20 years time, if Martin Luther King's birthday will have morphed into a sort of "Civil Rights Leaders Day." Because there's something kind of sad, to me, and maybe even a little cold and bureaucratic about an "honor general classification of people" day rather than "honor this specific person who did something memorable and worthwhile day")

At any rate. This morning, on the morning news show I listen to on the radio when I am plucking my eyebrows and brushing my hair and all of the many little tasks one need do to look acceptable in the modern world, they were talking about some "Know the Presidents" quiz that was out there.

And one of the news guys kept getting the wrong answers. And they were laughing about it.

And I don't know, but maybe it's elitist of me, but I tend to think that it is a little irresponsible not to even know about WASHINGTON (good God, the first president of the nation). The guy could not pick correctly off of a list of multiple choices what Washington's main contribution was to the founding of the country (the correct answer: as a military leader and a statesman.)

(I suppose that I should be equally shocked about something I heard on Book TV yesterday - that apparently some 20% of British high-school students chose "Denzel Washington" as the name of the first American president.)

I don't know. One of the things in society currently that bugs me is that there's this strong undercurrent of anti-learning. That it's somehow wasting brain-space to know facts about history, or science, or literature. I DO think there are important events, dates, theories, and books/plays/poems that I would consider an "educated" person as needing to know. (If that means I'm an elitist who "privileges" certain information over certain other information, then fine. We need a common ground. And one place where we can find common ground is if we all have the same basic background information we know).

I've also heard some people claim that that kind of learning is "elitist" and "white-male" and that it doesn't work with "where they came from." And that makes me kind of sad...yeah, I understand the whole "my people" (whoever they were) "are not regarded as part of the historical pantheon" thing. But...just as there's a point at which the idea of saying "all literature is good" becomes ridiculous (when people are saying, for example, that a Harlequin romance from the drugstore is as meaningful to society's development and understanding the human condition as, say, King Lear),) there's also a point at which you need to stop trying to force affirmative action on history and just go, "yeah, dead white guys made a lot of history and maybe it was wrong that they prevented other people from being important, but that doesn't mean there's no need to learn them..."

I'm not sure I totally agree with the old saying about those who don't know history being doomed to repeat it, but I do tend to think that those who don't know history are kind of rootless, and may not have as clear a perspective on or understanding of
where we are now, how we got here, and what we should be doing.

Anyway. I was feeling embarrassed when they brought up the quiz and I couldn't immediately think of the 14th president (that was one of the things one of the guys asked; I knew he would have been someone shortly before Lincoln - probably the 1850s - but I could not remember). (It was Franklin Pierce.)

Some of my friends, when I was in school, knew all of the presidents in order and the dates they served. My memory was unfortunately never that good, but I did know facts about what I regarded as the "really important" presidents.

Washington
Adams (both father and son, I'd regard father as more important, but both are)
Jefferson
Jackson (also beforehand - the Battle of New Orleans and all that)
Lincoln
maybe McKinley because of the Spanish-American War
both Roosevelts
maybe Kennedy
Reagan (but then - I count presidents who were in office during a given person's lifetime as just being presidents they should know something about. For me, that begins with Nixon...well, really, it begins with LBJ but I was a baby when he was president)

I also know at least a little about some of the others:

Madison (who might rise to the "really important" list if you included his earlier work)
Fillmore (who always seems to be the butt of jokes)
Andrew Johnson (the impeachment, though I'm not sure I fully understand WHY he was impeached or on what grounds...it seems like people just didn't like him, mainly)
U.S. Grant
McKinley
Taft
Hoover (know quite a bit about him, in fact - I've been to the Hoover library and museum a couple times while traveling through Iowa; it's pretty interesting. Hoover was also - AFAIK - the only President who was a geologist/mining engineer)
Truman
Eisenhower

and then, the ones who served during my lifetime (or at least the time during which I was laying down memories).

I recognize the names of others, and if pressed, might be able to come up with a random fact (like: Buchanan was the only bachelor-president. Or: W. H. Harrison caught pneumonia at his inaguration and died slightly after), but most of the facts I know are trivia rather than "what they did historically while they were in office."

But again: maybe it's elitist of me but I think American citizens should at least know a little bit about their presidents. At least Washington, Lincoln, and the ones who served during their lifetimes. And I'll say that I think it's a little sad that there are people out there (And I KNOW, because I've talked to some) who know more about the detail of Anna Nicole Smith's life than know about the first president of our nation. ESPECIALLY people who are currently in school, who should be learning this stuff.

I also tend to think about the "what you put in your head affects you" idea - is it better to learn about the deeds of people who (though they may not have been perfect) made an effort to improve the world, who were concerned with things OUTSIDE themselves, who, in some cases, were willing to sacrifice themselves (on whatever level) for the good of others...or does that have no effect at all, and spending your waking hours reading about/watching television shows on people who are basically selfish and shallow and don't see past their noses doesn't matter?

I don't know. I know I do feel better - and I feel more pushed to try to BE better - when I read about people like Washington and Co. than when I read about whatever fake tsuris some starlet is going through (especially when much of the tsuris seem to be largely self-imposed).

I don't know. I wish that instead of a nebulous day off that is mainly notable now for furniture sales (and a really egregious car ad featuring a hip-hop rendition of "Hail to the Chief"), that we took time to educate people (schoolchildren) about who the presidents were and what they did.

Another thing I'm not sure about is - where is the line between unrealistic hagiography and portraying EVERYONE as somehow debased and not worthy of emulation? One of the problems I have with some modern historical methods is that there often seem to be people with axes to grind, who want to make it seem that no one is actually really very good, and that even the people who did great things had bad motives underlying them. And yet - I'm not sure the Parson Weems school of biography is any more helpful (Although maybe I LIKE it more. I'd like to be able to believe in larger-than-life figures, I'd like to be able to have heroes).

So I don't know. For those of you with kids in the schools today: what are they learning about the Presidents? And for everyone: Who would you include on a short list of "really important presidents" that people should know the basic policies and actions of?