Alarmed by Fading Knowledge ...

[Dave Monroe]

>From Stephen Kinzer, "Mount Vernon, Alarmed by Fading
Knowledge, Seeks to Pep Up Washington's Image," NY
Times, Monday, July 29th, 2002 ...

MOUNT VERNON, Va. — Say goodbye to the stern and
remote George Washington, the boring one who wore a
powdered wig, had wooden teeth and always told the
truth. Embrace instead the action hero of the 18th
century, a swashbuckling warrior who survived wild
adventures, led brilliant military campaigns, directed
spy rings and fell in love with his best friend's
wife.

That is the new message from the people who run Mount
Vernon, the estate where Washington spent much of his
life and where more than one million people now go
each year to learn about him. Stirred to action by
what they say is an appalling decline in what visitors
know about Washington, they have embarked on a radical
course.

Their goal is to reposition the father of the country
for a new era. Among the tools they plan to use are
holograms, computer imagery, surround-sound audio
programs and a live-action film made by Steven
Spielberg's production company. The film may be shown
in a theater equipped with seats that rumble and pipes
that shoot battlefield smoke into the audience.

"We used to be so discreet that we didn't want to
display Washington's dentures," said James C. Rees,
executive director of Mount Vernon. "When we finally
broke down and showed them, they turned out to be a
sensation. That taught us something."

[...]

For more than a century, directors of Mount Vernon
concentrated on the limited mission of preserving
Washington's home and explaining his interest in
farming. The rest of his life, they could safely
assume, was being fully taught in classrooms.

Over the last few years, however, several studies at
Mount Vernon and elsewhere have made clear that this
assumption is no longer valid. Fewer people than ever
seem to know that Washington was a frontier surveyor
who fought Indians and by his mid-20's was already one
of the most famous people in North America. Nor do
they realize that he shaped a ragtag band of farmers
into an army that won American independence, presided
over the Constitutional Convention and, as first
president of the new United States, whipped 13
reluctant colonies into a union destined to become one
of the world's most influential nations. 

"He did something about an apple tree," said Jackie
Whaley, an 18-year-old high school student from Texas
who visited Mount Vernon on a recent morning. 

Her friend Jenny DeStefano offered an answer. "He cut
it down," she said.

[...]

Academic trends have so strongly encouraged the
teaching of history from social and cultural
perspectives, some scholars say, that little attention
is now given to leaders who headed governments, won
wars or established nations.

"There's a tendency to downplay the importance of the
individual, and it has hurt Washington," said Peter R.
Henriques, a history professor at George Mason
University in Fairfax, Va., and member of a board of
scholars advising Mount Vernon administrators on the
new project. "I don't think it's hero worship to
recognize that he was supreme among the group of
founders who helped bring about this country."

"But let's face it," Professor Henriques added, "he
was an 18th-century elitist slaveholder, and that
doesn't fit in well with the modern age. We're in an
age when white male heroes on horseback are not so
popular."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/29/arts/design/29GEOR.html?todaysheadlines

My inbox overfloweth, apparently, and I suspect I've
missed the day's activity 'round these parts, so a
thousand pardons if this has already been posted ...

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