Thanks for the overwhelming responses to the “Uniquely American” post.
I had my students vote which topics most interested them and as a result I will be taking many of your suggestions and making them into lesson plans! I will contact some of you with specific questions. They also voted for a topic called “Famous Americans.” Of course, this one is wide open, so again, let’s solicit answers. If you could teach about, say 3 – 5 famous Americans, who would they be?
Too many times in these types of discussions we end up looking at a few “notable Americans”. Typically people like George Washington, Abrham Lincoln, Louis and Clark, and people of that ilk are mentioned. However, I say teach of lesser known people who have certainly made a big impact.
1. BF Skinner: The originator of Behavioral Psychology. Sadly, it as people like Watson and Pavlov that bastardized his theories and in essence created a great confusion over the idea of Behavioral Psychology. Skinner strived for a connection between that which was outside(overt behavior) and that which was inside(intenal thoughts) and wanted there to be some form of connection between the two. Watson and Pavlov believed that since one cannot know the internal thoughts of a person, they cannot be looked at and thus the confusion exsists even today. Skinnner’s theories are still considered quite prominent in the 21st century unlike Freud’s general theories.
2. Richard Fenyman: One of the most influential theoretical phsysicts of our time. A member of The Manhattan Project, an intellectual, and a man who revolutionized Quantum electrodynamics. But it was for his warmth, his ability to teach, and his sense of humor that he is loved today. A man with a very off the wall sense of humor working in a field where you have to be able to laugh at yourself. His lectures are still used as reading material in many introductory physics lectures and his ability to write has allowed him to transcend from theoretical physicist to “Famous American”.
3. Henry Ford: Nothing says America more then Henry Ford. His theoretical construct of the assesmbly line revolutionized manuafacturing and led to a boom period in the American economic landscape. His “have it my way or make it yourself mentality” is clearly seen in a lot of products that we buy today. One of my favorite comments he makes after asked what colors the Model T came in was “Any color – so long as it’s black”.
4. John Steinbeck or Samuel Clemens: I cannot put a list of this magnitude together without including two of my favorite authors(I would hve included Faulkner, but that is not going to be particulalry easy to teach). Either man embodies a lost time in American innocence. Floating down the Mississippi with Huck and Tom or meandering around seeking the chicken farm with Lenny and George. These are timeless books put together by timeless writers. From a human perspective, I’d go with Samuel Clemens, but thats personal preference.
5. Walter Cronkite: the first and last of the unbiased news reporters. He prided himself on bipartisian, honest reporting. Sadly these days we are fused with news reporters full of opinion or spin and very little objectivness. Oh, and did I forget he is from Houston, Texas just like the last person on my list.
6. Big Tex: thats right. Ego has no bounds as Big Tex himself has made the list. A humble man of great compassion and understanding. A researcher, scientist, and humanist all rolled into one. Big Tex once spent an entire day with an elderly woman who wanted to commit suicide. After spending the day with Big Tex, she never considered that thought again! Big Tex has spent considerable time fundrasing for notable charities, encouraging the youth to vote, and tirelessly working with those afflicted with Mental Disorders. Big Tex once donated 2 days out of his week to work with those afflicted with Mental disorders. None of these people ever paid him a dime. Some people will claim to do “probono work” but do these people donate two full days a week? Some have described Big Tex as a modern day Mother Theresa others as a modern day Renaissance man. Still others are awed at his sense of humor and his ability to integrate different disciplines into a single workable theory. What more can be said about a great man and a shining example for today’s youth.
Abraham Lincoln, without a doubt. We were blessed as a nation to have a man like him in our darkest hour. Besieged by every group (seccessionists, abolitionists, those who wanted to let the South go, political rivals, regional interests), viciously derided, even by those nominally on his side, publicly ridiculed, beset by incompetence of most of his generals, plagued with bouts of depression and a half mad wife, tormented by loss of two of his children, he held firm and steered us through the calamity of the Civil War. Read Lincoln’s Virtues by William Lee Miller, or Freedom, by William Safire. Awkward, ungainly, ugly, in ill-fitting clothes… audiences invariably tittered when he rose to speak in his high pitched squeak, but, just as invariably, fell silent with a growing awareness that they were in the presence of a first rate mind, a deep thinker and a profoundly moral man. Would that we had such a leader now.
Thomas Paine
Daniel Boone
Lysander Spooner
Malcolm X
Noam Chomsky
Withdraw my nomination Abe Lincoln. Of course it has to be Big Tex. What was I thinking?
You could include the great American capitalists: JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, John Rockefeller and of course, Bill Gates
Just to add a little balance here:
Susan B. Anthony
Marie Curie
Jane Goodall
Gertrude Bell
Oh, just one American in that group!!
I’d recommend technological innovators:
– Steve Wozniak, who invented the Apple computer
– Henry Ford. That was a good suggestion on Tex’s part.
– I think Steve Jobs belongs in this category too, as he marketed technological advances to the point that their use actually made a difference in society and culture (without Jobs, I suspect the Apple would probably have remained a hacker gadget that not too many other people would have benefited from).
– Douglas Engelbart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart). He’s one of the least sung heros of the computer revolution, but his ideas probably defined it at least as much as Jobs or Gates did. He’s credited with introducing the idea of the mouse and graphical user interface (Apple improved on that idea, but they didn’t invent it).