After I posted this morning about libraries, I received the following from Will Fitzhugh, who is publisher of The Concord Review. The Concord Review has been publishing exemplary history papers by high school students for many years. You never know what students will get interested in, what they will pursue on their own, what passion they will develop.
David McCullough, Truman
New York: Touchstone, 1992, p. 58
He grew dutifully, conspicuously studious, spending long afternoons in the town library, watched over by a white plaster bust of Ben Franklin. Housed in two rooms adjacent to the high school, the library contained perhaps two thousand volumes. Harry and Charlie Ross vowed to read all of them, encyclopedias included, and both later claimed to have succeeded. Harry liked Mark Twain and Franklin’s Autobiography. He read Sir Walter Scott because Scott was Bessie Wallace’s favorite author. The fact that the town librarian, Carrie Wallace, was a cousin to Bessie may also have influenced the boy’s show of scholarly devotion.
“I don’t know anybody in the world ever read as much or as constantly as he did,” remembered Ethel Noland. “He was what you call a ‘book worm.’”
History became a passion, as he worked his way through a shelf of standard works on ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. “He had a real feeling for history,” Ethel said, “that it wasn’t something in a book, that it was part of life—a section of life or a former time, that it was of interest because it has to do with people.” He himself later said it was “true facts” that he wanted. “Reading history, to me, was far more than a romantic adventure. It was solid instruction and wise teaching which I somehow felt I wanted and needed.” He decided, he said, that men make history, otherwise there would be no history. History did not make the man, he was quite certain.
His list of heroes advanced. To Andrew Jackson, Hannibal, and Robert E. Lee were added Cincinnatus, Scipio, Cyrus the Great and Gustavus Adolphus, the seventeenth-century Swedish king. No Jeffersons or Lincolns or Leonardos were part of his pantheon as yet. Whatever it was that made other boys of turn-of-the-century America venerate Andrew Carnegie or Thomas Edison, he had none of it. The Great Men by his lights were still the great generals.
Few boys in town ever went to high school. The great majority went to work. High school, like piano lessons, was primarily for girls. In Harry’s class, largest yet at the new high school, there were thirty girls and just eleven boys. [Class of 1901]
This is the reason that with Reagan and Bennett in about 1985 history and govt. classes started going away and now we have the result of that. This was a long term plan to take over the country just as allowing 9-11 was. Putin even called Bush a week ahead of time about just 9-11 and Bush told him where to go as they were the designers of the plan. How is it that 8 of the so-called hijackers have been found alive in Saudi Arabia? When you do not know history you are bound to repeat it and that is no in our favor.
Sorry if you’ve all seen this recent article and if you’ve already discussed this–I’m a bit behind in reading this wonderful blog! But just in case you haven’t seen it, I thought I’d go ahead and post it again as we talk about school “reform”:
http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
Harry Truman was a truly great man who went to public school and learned from a curriculum in which history was a big part. We should all be grateful because what he must have learned in school and through his own self-motivation would someday enable him to make decisions that would end a great World War and save Western Europe from Communist aggression. His decisions prevented the spread the of totalitarianism beyond the borders of the Iron Curtain. Also, against his own upbringing and prejudices, he desegregated the military and began to plant the seeds of a great civil rights movement. And finally, he believed the role of government was to help the many. Under his administration, the GI BIll would educate many poor and working class servicemen and bring them into the middle class. No, Mr. Truman was not perfect. I do not think anyone is. I do know one other thing; he fought any type of government corruption. He went after, as a US Senator, private contractors that used government funds for their own profit and greed. I know he would totally opposed those who are using our common tax money for their own personal profit and gain. Their false altruism toward high need students is just a mask to their greed, corruption and hatred toward hard working public school teachers who just want to be treated with dignity and respect.