Historical Literacy

Last night at work our interviewers were calling Washington, D.C. (among other places) to conduct surveys. Between calls, one of our interviewers, a 23-year-old woman, asked me an interesting question: "Washington D.C.'s in Virginia, right?" ¹

Okay, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, or shocked, or disappointed, that an otherwise reasonably intelligent American adult wouldn't know where our nation's capitol was located or why the answer to that question may have been significant. But I was. It inspired me to conduct an informal survey of my own. I took out a penny, a nickel, dime, and a quarter, and started asking people to identify the people whose images appeared on the faces of the coins.

I asked about fifteen of our interviewers these questions, and I found the results interesting. Practically all of them were able to identify George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. But only about a third could identify the man on the nickel as Thomas Jefferson, and only two correctly identified Franklin D. Roosevelt on the dime. ²

Now that we've lost President Reagan and some people are making a push to have his likeness included on our money, I think it's important that we ask ourselves who's already on our money, and why. What contributions to our country and to the world did the men listed above make? What about our other coins and bills? Whose faces appear on the half dollar coin, the three one-dollar coins, and the $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills? ³ Why are they historically important enough to be so commemorated?

So much of what we do day to day is driven by money. At some point in the next few days, instead of just spending a coin or bill that has come into your hands, I challenge you to take five minutes to ponder the life and contributions of the person whose image you're about to spend. And if you don't know much about that person, well, that situation can be remedied. Five minutes online can give you not only a crash course in historical literacy, but maybe even a small understanding of some of the events that helped make this nation what it is today.

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¹ The correct answer is "Close, but no." Washington D.C. is located in a federal district - kind of a 'neutral zone' between the states of Virginia and Maryland - called the District of Columbia. In fact, that's what the "D.C." stands for.

² Don't feel bad; the fact is that I initially missed on the dime too. I didn't look closely enough, and I said it was Eisenhower. We can all be a bit more historically literate, I suppose.

³ The answers are John F. Kennedy, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Susan B. Anthony, Sacagawea (whose name, according to a recent National Geographic IMAX presentation, should probably be pronounced "suh-COG-uh-WAY-uh"), Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Franklin, respectively.