Curriculum Resource: The Most Underrated President

Wow, it has been a week and a half packed with holidays and special activities--Valentines Day, the announcement of the winner of The Great Sea Slug Beauty Contest, The Great Backyard Bird Count (our best year ever in terms of number of different birds we spotted), Presidents Day, the 50th anniversary of John Glenn's orbit, and Mardi Gras (not to mention a sprinkling of snow in there).  Most of these included some science or history components along with cooking special dishes (Whiskey Shrimp and Apple Dowdy for Presidents Day and Chicken Bonne Femme and a new dish I invented, Mardi Slaw, for Fat Tuesday).  It's been a lot of fun, but a good bit of work to add to our normal homeschooling schedule.

But before we abandoned our Festive February events, I wanted to share an assignment I gave my son this week in regards to Presidents Day.  The Washington Post was having an online discussion with its readers about which presidents were the most underrated.  They eliminated from consideration nine presidents they considered to be the most frequently praised:  George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan.  Besides those nine, they asked, which presidents haven't gotten the amount of praise and respect that they deserve?

I found both the question itself and the online discussion to be really interesting.  For example, some argued that Lyndon Johnson's domestic achievements were remarkable--but does his mistakes in Vietnam outweigh the good he did in terms of civil rights?  Did Harry Truman's approval to use the atomic bomb on the Japanese people make him a courageous hero or a Western-centered murderer?  Was James Madison's sheparding of the US Constitution one of the most overlooked, but fundamentally important, contributions of all presidents?  Are we too focused on recent events and presidencies and forget the developments of the past?

I thougth this was a great discussion to be having on Presidents Day.  Plus, it has particular relevence in our family, since my brother spent the summer visiting all the presidential libraries and is writing a book on the question of presidential legacies and the role presidential libraries play in how we remember our former leaders (read more about it on his blog, Across the Country with the Presidents).

So I gave my son a Presidents Day assignment to write a persuasive essay (another skill we're working this year) about the former President that we as a country should appreaciate more.  We talked about the Washington Post discussion, we looked at Wikipedia's collection of ratings of US Presidents, then told him to write a polished essay without telling me who his selection was until I read it.

Meanwhile, I was trying to come up with my answer.  I would probably end up with James Madison, because I think the country would have fallen apart way before the Civil War had it not been for his work on skillfully crafting a Constitution that all the original states could live with; however, I am somewhat predisposed in favor of Madison for some personal reasons.   The Washington Post didn't have an actual vote, but gave the following list, based on the number of comments and recommendations of comments by other people:
1.  George H.W. Bush
2.  Lyndon Johnson
3.  Jimmy Carter
4.  Harry Truman
5.  Calvin Coolidge
6.  Barack Obama (I excluded him from our considerations--we were only doing former presidents)
7.  Gerald Ford
8.  James Polk
9.  Chester Arthur
10.Andrew Johnson
(To learn more about the arguments in favor of these presidents, read the Post's article here.)

Personally, I'm not sure about Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Johnson, and I have mixed feeling about James Polk (I think he only got this high on the list of underrated due to the song below by They Might Be Giants):



AND, of course, I thought James Madison should be on the list.

But, in general, those were the presidents who came to my mind for being underappreciated.

However, when I got the finished essay from my son, he had not chosen any of the presidents mentioned above.  Instead, he chose to write about......

James Buchanon

JAMES BUCHANON?   He of the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision and Kansas constitution?  The president that, in the Wikipedia presidential rating system, was rated as one of the top five WORST presidents by 15 out of the 18 polls, and the very worst president by four of them.   Well, at least he definitely falls into the unappreciated category....

But I loved my son's take on his presidency.  He reviewed his actions and talked about how bad they had been for the country.  But he summed it up by saying that his goal was "desparately delaying the war," and then concluded:

It was quite a good thing that he delayed the issue of secession until Lincoln, the right man for the job,was elected. Putting the issue into the hands of the right person was an invaluably beneficial act...

I really loved his perspective.  What a great way to view those presidencies (or other leaders, or even people or events in our own lives) that we consider to be "failures"--that they were placeholders, or part of the process of getting the right people and resources in place for our latter successes!  He gave me some great perspective on the entire issue, as well as writing quite a good essay.

I recommend this as a great assignment to give your students for Presidents Day.  It certainly made ours more thoughtful and meaningful.

Who would you choose as the most underrated US President?  Share your choices below in the comments section.

Curriculum Resource: The 50th Anniversary of Americans in Space

Today we can celebrate not only our Founding President and the President who led our nation through its greatest challenge, but also 50 years of Americans in space.  On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the planet in his Friendship 7 space capsule (Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person to orbit the Earth in his Volstok space craft the previous year).   Americans at the time were transfixed during Glenn's approximately four-hour flight, which would lead in just a few years to Americans being the first humans to walk on the moon.

NASA is marking the occasion with an online interactive educational resource on Friendship 7 and the Mercury Space Program.  It has lots of facts and multimedia materials to explore, including interactive views of the interiors of the space capsules, the rocket technology, components of the space suits, flight trajectories, etc.  It also includes video footage of various aspects.

Below is one item from that website. It is a 25 minute video NASA has produced on the 50th Anniversary of Friendship 7:



I think it is hard for our middle schoolers, for whom space travel is such a regular occurence that no one even follows it any more, to realize how revolutionary it seemed at the time.  So I would add to the official NASA videos a couple of great movies about the space program--The Right Stuff and Apollo 13 (which is one of my favorite movies ever).

Hmmm...perhaps after I fix a version of last year's Presidents Day meal, we need to settle down in front of a great space flick tonight....

Curriculum Resources: Presidents Day and Black History Month

Looking for a fun and educational way to celebrate Presidents Day this weekend?  Check out some new interactive educational video games on American history produced by WNET, the public broadcasting channel for New York City, geared specifically for middle school students.

Entitled Mission US, these FREE games allow students to see pivotal periods in American history through the eyes of a young person at the time.   In each chapter, the character has some tasks to perform, which cause him or her to interact with a number of other characters that provide contrasting viewpoints.  However, there are multiple pathways through the game.  What the character will experience will vary from game to game, based on the decisions made by the students directing the action.

The first game is entitled "For Crown or Colony?"  In this game, students play the role of a young printer's apprentice in Boston during the rising conflicts between British authorities and American revolutionaries.  The game provides the perspectives of people both for and against Independence, until the students are required to choose one side or the other.

The second mission is "Flight to Freedom."  This time, students play as Lucy, a 14-year-old slave in Kentucky, as she attempts to escape to Ohio.  Even if she makes it, there are plenty of challenges even in the supposedly "free" colonies.  This game presents the ethical dilemnas and viewpoints from all around (such as, is it OK to steal from struggling farmers as you travel along the Underground Railroad?)


While these two missions are the only ones completed right now, there are two more that will be released in 20123 and 2014.  Mission 3 covers the time of the transcontinental railroad and is entitled "The Race for the Golden Spike, while Mission 4, "The Sidewalks of New York," allows students to become muckraking journalists in early 20th Century New York.

While the first two games don't feature George Washington or Abraham Lincoln per se, they are great vehicles for a more nuanced exploration of their times than many curricular materials.  Mission 2 is also a great tie in with Black History month.  And there are some related games you can play, such as "Think Fast! About the Past," a timed historical knowledge game, and a music game.

Here are trailers for the first two missions:







The bottom line is, if your children enjoyed the "Liberty's Kids" PBS cartoon series on the American Revolution as much as my son did during his elementary school years, then you'll definitely want to check out Mission US.  And if they didn't, maybe this will do the trick of turning them on to US history.

Curriculum Resource: Visiting Presidential Libraries

I realized that I haven't mentioned on this blog one of the American history and civics resources I've been following this summer.  My youngest brother, David Cross, has been on a quest to visit all 13 of the official American Presidential libraries.  The great thing is that we can participate virtually by checking into his blog, Across the Country with the Presidents.

David is a lawyer, a part-time writer, and, like most of my family, an aficionado of politics and American civic history.  He plans to write a book about his trip, which is centered around what determines a President's long-term reputation and whether their presidential libraries play a role in that.  (For a full explanation of his project, click here.)

So of course I am biased, but I think he does a great job of capturing the zeitgeist of the places he visits.  And I think he makes a good case that for all these guys, even with all the modern PR techniques and carefully controlled messages and media manipulation and such, that you learn something about their core by seeing where they came from and observing how they try to lay out their legacy.

So if you have the opportunity to visit some of these places yourself, I would recommend you do so.  It helps these historical figures come alive and seem more human to students of all ages.  But if you can't get there yourself, then check out his blog.  It is certainly something I plan to use as we study 20th century history this year.

Curriculum Resource: Constitution Day

Today--Friday, September 16, 2011--is Constitution Day, which marks the 224th anniversary of the signing of the US Constitution.  The official name is actually "Constitution and Citizenship Day," and it is part of a legislative mandate that all public educational institutions have some programming on this event.  That doesn't apply to us homeschoolers, of course, but I welcome every opportunity to teach my son and his peer about the importance of this pivotal document in American history and the role they must play to keep democracy alive.

We've studied the Constitution before, so we reviewed the history of how the document came to be, particularly the compromises required to come to agreement among all the different states, some of which have worked brilliantly (such as keeping equal state representation in the Senate and proportional representation in the House), others not so well (slavery issues).  We went over the provisions briefly, discussed the branches of government, and reviewed the rights guaranteed us through the Bill of Rights (and some of the other major amendments ).  Finally, we practiced the Citizenship aspect of the day by having each student identify a legislative issue that mattered to him (I was working with an all-male group) and writing a letter expressing their support or opposition on that issue to an appropriate government official.

A good source for information was the website Constitution Facts.  Not only did they have a lot of good information, they had some fun quizzes, which always liven things up.  We took the Constitutional I.Q. Quiz as a group, and got 9 out of 10 answers right, which won us a rating of "Constitutional Whiz Kids."  There is also a What Founding Father Are You? , which was a fun personality-style test (my son got matched to Benjamin Franklin, which is definitely the one he is most like).  The "Real or Fake" Quiz asks some off-beat questions about the Founding Fathers, and once again we did well enough as a group to be deemed "Honorary Founding Fathers."

So while writing the legislators was the most important part of the lesson, the quizzes were probably the most fun!  But any activity on this day is important to remind our children that the Constitution and the government it designs are living and evolving entities that need ongoing involvement by citizens of all ages to function properly.

Looking Forward to Looking Back on the 20th Century

Happy Labor Day to all!  As an official holiday, I didn't give my son any school work today, but I have been busy planning our curricula for the year ahead.  I was particularly focused today on working on our plans for our history studies this year.

As I stated in a previous post, we are doing 20th century history this year, and I'm really excited about it.   Many people would not be.  History of the 20th century can be pretty depressing, given the high numbers of wars, conflicts, purges, and other major exterminations of groups of people, not to mention economic depressions, ecological disasters, wildlife and nature decimation, and other such dreary topics.  For example, Susan Wise Bauer, the author of the popular Story of the World series, sums up the 20th century in this way:

Revolution shatters the structures; but the men who build the next set of structures haven’t conquered the evil that lives in their own hearts. The history of the twentieth century is, again and again, the story of men who fight against tyrants, win the battle, and then are overwhelmed by the unconquered tyranny in their own souls.

Boy, that sounds like a bummer, right?

However, the timing seems perfect to me.  Followers of this blog know I'm pretty fanatical about politics, and the upcoming presidential election, more so than any I've experienced in a long time, really seems like it could be about the fundamental principles about American democracy.  The clash between the Tea Party and the Progressives is no longer about one candidate versus another, or one side of various issues versus the other side, but a true debate about the nature of government--a debate that is addressing some of the issues that have mostly been taken for granted for as long as I've been alive.

So we argue about the role of government regulations, and whether or not they should be eliminated, or made stronger.  Should we be talking about that without reviewing what life was like in the 1900's and 1910's, before government got into the business of regulating business?  (Although I don't think I dare have my son read The Jungle yet, since I'm not prepared to switch to vegetarianism.)  As Michael Gerson writes in a recent article in the Washington Post, Texas Governor Rick Perry is actually attacking the entire New Deal itself.  How can we evaluate his arguments, and the counter arguments of his foes, if we haven't studied the Great Depression and legislation that was passed to respond to that economic crisis?  In terms of foreign policy, doesn't it make sense to analyze the wars that we've "won" (surely most would agree that included World War II and the first Bush's Persian Gulf War) and those that we've "lost" (perhaps more debatable, but I think most would include the Vietnam War in that category, and I think Anne Applebaum makes a good case for the "War on Terror," at least as we've chosen to pursue it so far)?

So we might not have a jolly year ahead of us in history this year.  But it seems like it will be a really significant one.  I think it will be important for my son to have some of this background as he tries to understand and decide about the candidate positions he will be hearing in the Presidential election of 2012.  I'll do my best to give him a factual basis from which to evaluate the conflicting claims.

I only hope the rest of the country will try to recall some of our 20th century history as well.  We have learned a few lessons since the Boston Tea Party, after all.

American History in the News

This year, we will be focusing on 20th century history for our social studies.  This is just kind of how it turned out, as we've been approaching history chronologically and thus marching through time year by year.  But with the elections coming next year, I'm glad my son will be exposed to 20th century history this year.  Increasingly, it appears we are facing deep problems in American society that we haven't faced since the early 20th century, and I will be glad for him to know some more about those times as we try to analyze the arguments of the political candidates who are vying for our votes (OK, my vote at least, although he did participate thoughtfully in the Kids Vote program during the last presidential election).  Plus, facing some of the same issues today will, I believe, make our study of those past policies, failed or successful, richer and more meaningful.

There were two articles I read in the Washington Post today that brought this synchronicity home to me.  In one,  Greg Ip, who is the US economics editor of The Economist and author of The Little Book of Economics:  How the Economy Works in the Real World, analyzes the changing beliefs about basic economics by the current Republican party.  Entitled  The Republicans' New Voodoo Economics?,  Ip suggests that some of the most radical Republican candidates are rejecting not just Obama's economic policies, but the entire Keynesian economic theory that has driven most of the US economic policies for the bulk of the 20th century.  Mr. Ip seems not to be in favor of this trend, mentioning, among others, the belief that it was Herbert Hoover's narrow focus on balancing the budget in 1932 that made the Great Depression more severe.

Keynesian economic philosophy is not something that I know enough about that I can talk intelligently as to its success in the past vis a vis other alternatives.  But believe me, it will be something I will be looking into more carefully when we get to the 1930's in our history studies.  And, fortunately, I have some family resources at hand; my father is/was a professional economist, and my brother just visited the Herbert Hoover presidential library, trying to find out what more there was to the man than a one-term President during the Depression.

The other article goes back even further than Keynes and Hoover.  In The Real Grand Bargain Coming Undone, Harvard history professor Alexander Keyssar writes that the current political debate reminds him not of the Depression, but of the Robber Barons of the late 19th century and the reform efforts to balance their power that were passed in the first several decades of the 20th century.  Keyssar, who also is the author of The Right to Vote:  The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, points out that the public outrage over the excesses of unbridled capitalism at the turn of the century were mollified by such laws or programs as the Sherman Antitrust Act, worker safety laws, banking regulations, the rise of the labor movement, and the establishment of the social welfare programs of Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare--most of which are currently under attack by some Republicans.   He argues that it is this agreement between segments of society--that corporates can run up huge profits if workers have a basic level of protection and a social safety net--that is what really is under attack in today's politics.

Anyway, these echoes from the past that are arising in our current political debate promise to make this year's history studies particularly important and fruitful in raising a young man who can participate intelligently in our democratic system.  It reminds me of the all-too-often misquoted Santayana quote, which I think is worthy of being repeated in its entirety here, especially since the first sentence is what many of us need to consider:

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, 1905