High Schoolers Name Most Famous Americans In History

The friendliest place on the web for anyone that follows U2.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

MrsSpringsteen

Blue Crack Addict
Joined
Nov 30, 2002
Messages
29,245
Location
Edge's beanie closet
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

Here's a quiz: Get a pencil and paper and jot down the 10 most famous Americans in history. No presidents or first ladies allowed.

Who tops your list?


Ask teenagers, and they overwhelmingly choose African-Americans and women, a study shows. It suggests that the "cultural curriculum" that most kids — and by extension, their parents — experience in school increasingly emphasizes the stories of Americans who are not necessarily dead, white or male.

Researchers gave blank paper and pencils to a diverse group of 2,000 high school juniors and seniors in all 50 states and told them: "Starting from Columbus to the present day, jot down the names of the most famous Americans in history."

Topping the list: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman. Three of the top five — and six of the top 10 — are women.

Sam Wineburg, the Stanford University education and history professor who led the study along with Chauncey Monte-Sano of the University of Maryland, says the prominence of black Americans signals "a profound change" in how we see history.

"Over the course of about 44 years, we've had a revolution in the people who we come to think about to represent the American story," Wineburg says.

"There's a kind of shift going on, from the narrative of the founders, which is the national mythic narrative, to the narrative of expanding rights," he says.

Yes, but how does he explain No. 7: Oprah Winfrey?

She has "a kind of symbolic status similar to Benjamin Franklin," Wineburg says. "These are people who have a kind of popularity and recognition because they're distinguished in so many venues."

Joy Hakim, author of A History of US, says taking out the presidents "isn't quite fair" but concedes that the list isn't too shabby.

"I sometimes ask students to imagine themselves in a classroom 500 years from now. What will their teacher say about the 20th century? What were its lasting accomplishments? Of course, we don't know where future historians will focus, but I'm guessing that the civil rights movement and the incredible scientific achievements will be the big stories."

For what it's worth, when the researchers polled 2,000 adults in a different survey, their lists were nearly identical. To Wineburg, that shows that what's studied in school affects not just children but the adults who help them with their schoolwork.

The study acknowledges that the emphasis on African-American figures by the schools leaves behind not only 18th- and 19th-century figures but others as well, such as Hispanic icon Cesar Chavez, Native American heroes such as Pocahontas and Sacagawea and labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs.

At the same time, the study, scheduled to appear in the March issue of The Journal of American History, notes that teachers the researchers talked to while giving the quiz predicted that student lists would be top-heavy with entertainers and celebrities. Aside from Winfrey and Marilyn Monroe, entertainers appear "nowhere near the top" of the lists.

Dennis Denenberg, author of 50 American Heroes Every Kid Should Meet, says it's no surprise the civil rights era still resonates. "Since it so redefined America post-World War II, I think educators feel it's truly a story young people need to know about because we're still struggling with it," he says. "The Cold War is over and gone. The civil rights movement is ongoing."

Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%

4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%

5.Benjamin Franklin: 29%

6. Amelia Earhart: 25%

7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%

8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%

9. Thomas Edison: 18%

10. Albert Einstein: 16%
 
nathan1977 said:
WTF? No Britney Spears? What about Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton? OMG!



you know what? when i read the title of this thread i thought that it was certainly going to be another article about how high schoolers knew everything about Britney but nothing about Benjamin Franklin or that Lohan had topped Lincoln.

what a pleasant surprise.
 
I'm surprised Earhart made the list; I'm pretty sure I never learned about her in school. Other than that, I don't know that this list is that different from what me and my classmates would've come up with 20 years ago if asked to list "the 10 most famous Americans in history, no presidents or first ladies allowed."
 
diamond said:
Didn't Robert Mapplethorpe make the list?:angry:

dbs



i knew you had a thing for well-endowed, beautifully proportioned African-American males.

i can't claim to have all those characteristics ... but, you know ...
 
I am rather relieved to see that white males have not completely been eliminated from our culture yet. We are close, but not yet.
 
[Q]Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%[/Q]


?????????????????
 
Dreadsox said:
[Q]Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%[/Q]


?????????????????

You have a question about Harriet Tubman?:eyebrow:
 
U2isthebest said:


You have a question about Harriet Tubman?:eyebrow:

Well, I have been running 102 degree fever for the last four days. But is she 20th Century?

I am drugged out of my skull but having majored in history, I am trying to understand the article calling her twentieth century.
 
Dreadsox said:


Well, I have been running 102 degree fever for the last four days. But is she 20th Century?

I am drugged out of my skull but having majored in history, I am trying to understand the article calling her twentieth century.

I don't understand that either. Apparently the reporter isn't too well-versed in American History. The original survey, though, asked the students to pick the most famous Americans in all of our history, and she should definitely be on the list. I misunderstood your implication and thought you were wondering why she would've been on the list at all. Sorry!
 
U2isthebest said:


I don't understand that either. Apparently the reporter isn't too well-versed in American History. The original survey, though, asked the students to pick the most famous Americans in all of our history, and she should definitely be on the list. I misunderstood your implication and thought you were wondering why she would've been on the list at all. Sorry!

Actually, I would probably place her higher than Rosa Parks. But that is me.
 
I am rather excited to see Edison on the list. Amelia Earhart? I am not sure she belongs in the ranks of Rosa, Susan, Harriet....

I am surprised that Elenor Roosevelt is not on there. Clara Barton would have made the list before Amelia in my book. Abilgail Adams??????? Helen Keller?
 
Last edited:
U2isthebest said:
You have a question about Harriet Tubman?:eyebrow:

I do! This is probably going to be embarrassing, but who the hell is she? I'm a history student and I've studied a fair deal of US history, much more than anybody in Australia is really expected to do, and yet I don't recognise her name whatsoever. Every other name in this thread is familiar and I can name what the person in question did, but Harriet Tubman doesn't ring a bell.
 
"The study acknowledges that the emphasis on African-American figures by the schools leaves behind not only 18th- and 19th-century figures but others as well, such as Hispanic icon Cesar Chavez, Native American heroes such as Pocahontas and Sacagawea and labor leaders such as Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs."


The survey does not surprize me. I teach 7th grade language arts in a middle school and most of my students have no clue on American history or the people who helped shape it.

Politcal Correctness, within the schools, has bashed history in America.
 
Dreadsox said:
I am rather relieved to see that white males have not completely been eliminated from our culture yet. We are close, but not yet.

They seem to control your government, last time I checked.

Although it's certainly legitimate to ask questions about why a lot of white male authors - e.g. Graham Greene, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh and others - are largely ignored in universities these days because they aren't sufficiently 'multi-cultural'.
 
Axver said:


I do! This is probably going to be embarrassing, but who the hell is she? I'm a history student and I've studied a fair deal of US history, much more than anybody in Australia is really expected to do, and yet I don't recognise her name whatsoever. Every other name in this thread is familiar and I can name what the person in question did, but Harriet Tubman doesn't ring a bell.

She was an abolitionist and a unionist . She made many trips via the Underground Railroad to rescue hundreds of slaves in the ninteenth slavery and help them escape to freedom. She was a herself born into slavery, and when she escaped, she rescued her family and then many others. She helped some of these slaves get all the way to Canada, and she helped many of them get work(real work).

And the Underground Railroad wasn't a railroad. It was a term used to refer to a series of secret routes used by escaped slaves to get to the North/Free states and even Canada, with the help of abolitionists like Harriet Tubman.
 
the iron horse said:


Politcal Correctness, within the schools, has bashed history in America.

I disagree......And Agree to some extent.

History should be color/gender blind. However, I do believe that it is important to provide examples of successful and influential people based on gender to be important for all children to see.

When and entire race has been put down, enslaved, segregated, discriminated against for a majority of this country's history....then I do believe we OWE it as a society to find examples of historically relevent people to teach about.

I also think so much emphasis has been placed on teaching history as dates in the past that kids HATE it.

There are themes, throughout history that can be used to teach making it more meaningful. Dates can be looked up instantly on the internet.
 
namkcuR said:
She was an abolitionist and a unionist . She made many trips via the Underground Railroad to rescue hundreds of slaves in the ninteenth slavery and help them escape to freedom. She was a herself born into slavery, and when she escaped, she rescued her family and then many others. She helped some of these slaves get all the way to Canada, and she helped many of them get work(real work).

And the Underground Railroad wasn't a railroad. It was a term used to refer to a series of secret routes used by escaped slaves to get to the North/Free states and even Canada, with the help of abolitionists like Harriet Tubman.

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I am familiar with the Underground Railroad - I can't say it's anything I've studied in depth, but it has come up in both high school and university before. So perhaps Harriet Tubman got a mention then and I just didn't recall the name. Whatever the case, certainly nothing much at all was made of her here.

Given the US's fairly unique position in world affairs currently, it would be interesting to see an international equivalent of this list. I know that my mother, in a New Zealand high school, did no Kiwi or British history, but did two years of US stuff!
 
Back
Top Bottom