Today is the Presidents Day Holiday. There used to be two separate holidays in February, one on the 12th for Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and one holiday on the 22nd for George Washington’s birthday.
The holidays now honor neither Lincoln nor Washington, and are supposed to be a tribute for all the presidents. Going from the two most famous presidents in the country’s history to a generic holiday for all who held the office is an honor to none of them.
Looking at Lincoln High that has a namesake with a rich and vivid history is still pretty dismal with the way that the birthday on the 12th of February and the all-purpose Presidents Day is recognized at Lincoln. Sometimes I wonder what other “Lincoln High’s” do across the country- are there doing any better in dissemination of any history of this president or are they just plodding along like the LAUSD non-distinguished manner of doing anything commemorative or informative?
We used to talk, as teachers, about "teaching" strategies, "teachable" moments, scaffolding, and "engaging" students as activities for the purpose of enhancing or maximizing the learning experience. So when it comes to using Lincoln’s birthday as such a vehicle to focus some better attention on such things of history, they miss the boat and it just doesn’t happen. I do have to say that this is not the case for everyone that was teaching at Lincoln, but the task should be something coordinated from the policy and decision-making levels for accomplishing some overall impact in education instead of being left to chance and totally an unplanned event.
I could be just too picky here and what with all the drop outs and the problems with passing the High School Exit Exam and dealing with budget cuts, it might be too much too ask of a school to try to find each opportunity to develop a higher level of education while shoring up some of the lost pride that has eroded so much from the days when I graduated from Lincoln. There’s a lot that can be accomplished at this school in a lot of small ways to improve things but most of the time somebody is looking for a bigger, flashier solution to fix everything. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the solution is all just one thing. It’s a lot of little things working together to move the whole program along. Waiting for some big bang theory of education to arrive or to be created is not the answer. A little bit of parent involvement, more student participation in decisions (and that does not mean abdicating everything to a student body choice), work in some community business activity of a reciprocal nature and try to get alumni working in more than the limited peripheral activities at football games or cash awards for select programs and students.
Right now, the budget crisis keeps the LAUSD busy doing a lot of hand-wringing and the potential for more job cuts is growing. On the teachers side, headed up by the union, it just looks like there is some wagon-circling going on for a priority of maintaining teacher job security under the union umbrella, and the district is moving in a slow and unsatisfactory manner to solve things. (I will talk about LAUSD’s move to kick up property taxes by $200 a parcel separately.) In the meanwhile, the main reason for schools and the District is still the students and the attention to their educational needs takes a back seat, as usual, to the other parts of the system, the adults.
So, while there is a day off from school today and while most government offices are also closed, there is little recognition of any particular one of the presidents that this re-structured holiday has fostered while replacing the Lincoln’s Birthday and Washington’s Birthday holidays. It’s been a real step backward.
Jay Leno used to have a segment of his show with man on the street questions posed that brought out some really ignorant answers- a city election was going on months after the Presidential election ended and a couple of young women were asked who they voted for. “Obama” was the answer for each. They were asked again, “No, who did you vote for in the city elections today?” They answered, “ Oh, what elections? Is there an election today?” Aside from the comedy aspect of this, it shows a cloud of ignorance in basic history and civic awareness that hangs over the heads of a lot of people in L.A. That drift to creating a larger group of less-informed persons (in this area, at least) is what allows greater control to be granted to those who are informed and can take advantage of things based on that condition. They tend to be politicians and they are more able to manipulate the less educated masses for their own purposes. Look around and see city and state conditions for that happening.
That’s the kind of general deterioration of education that’s come about by making changes in these holidays for the political expediency of creating room for more contemporary holidays. Changing the holidays around didn’t cause the current ills by that singular act, but it’s a part of a lot of things that work together to get us here.
If check LHS’ web site, you might see what I mean. Last year was the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. There was a display case in the main lobby of LHS prepared by the Alumni Association. Not much else was observed by me about this event at LHS. This is the now the 201st birthday but who would know? I would like to be wrong about seeing nothing happening along these lines, and maybe I just haven’t caught much of the news from LHS because I didn’t look too hard or they didn’t promote things too much. Either way, I don’t think there is as much to represent the educational system at work to use opportunities in this narrow slice of the entire pie of school actions.
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