The Student Princes
EASTLAND, KATHERINE
The Student Princes A child is the father to the president here. by Katherine Eastland This fun, interactive exhibit about the education of 20th-century presidents presents more than 150 artifacts...
...It's easy to feel at home here: Like Jimmy Carter, we all possess cute, sometimes embarrassing, family photos...
...Exhibit coordinator Jennifer Nichols explains that "[the presidents] are uncommon men, but we all share common experiences...
...Of course...
...Or what grades the boys made in classes such as "deportment" and "hygiene...
...After reading one Rover Boys book, for example, I wouldn't stop until I'd finished all of them...
...Nonetheless, in the opening scene, a few documents reveal that the presidents themselves had heroes...
...The lesson: Kids can make a few substellar grades and still grow up just fine, perhaps even sit in the Oval Office one day...
...I think I like Caesar and Tarzan...
...The dominant colors are, fittingly, primaries: ruler yellow, brick red, sports-locker blue...
...Beside this, the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower: My first reading love was ancient history...
...by Katherine Eastland This fun, interactive exhibit about the education of 20th-century presidents presents more than 150 artifacts from the presidential libraries, most of which will go on tour after the show's debut in Washington...
...And when they take note, like the girl in red glasses, that the leaders of their country were imperfect like them, the knowledge comes as a relief...
...One girl in red glasses showed her mom an especially abysmal grade (55) JFK made on a Latin test at age 13...
...Not necessarily a bad message for a grade-obsessed culture...
...While I was admiring (and, I admit, delighting in) the hats in Franklin Roosevelt's class photo, a businessman type nudged me: "Was this the guy who dropped the nukes...
...As one mother said to her son, standing beside an exhibit bookcase: "Pick one of the books the presidents liked...
...So when children find something familiar in a museum, they gravitate towards it to see how they measure up...
...There are a few moments when kids can see inklings of nobility...
...All these documents are common, playing a part in the fabric of everyday kid life...
...In this section, called "Memories," there are a few scrapbooks with photographs, and there's a television playing a video of the presidents all grown up and talking—with a kind of wistful, grandfa-therly charm—about their schooldays...
...Richard Nixon talks about how he wished a grade-school teacher could have worked with him in the White House: She always doled out the best advice...
...Harry Truman, not yet a master of punctuation, wrote that "a true heart and a strong mind and a great deal of courage and I think a man will get through the world...
...These and other specimens adorn six spaces, each highlighting an aspect of education, whether formal— as in the first three, which track grade school, high school, and college—or nonacademic, as in the last three, which track extracurricular activities, sports, and the presidents' personal reflections on their schooldays...
...jumbled, curvy hand) to George H.W Bush after he invited her to a Christmas promenade...
...And if our parents were tech-savvy, and affluent, we have some home movies, too...
...Here are Ronald Reagan's words, framed on a wooden shelf: During those first years in Dixon, I was a voracious reader, and once I found a fictional hero I liked, I would consume everything I could about him...
...Despite its hazy history, his inquiry touched on what the show omits: what the boys became, the stuff that transcends ordinariness...
...Replied the boy: "May I pick two...
...Yes, there are lockers in the sports section...
...And then everyone lets out a quiet laugh and leaves...
...The ordinary and the extraordinary require each to enrich the other...
...but, when not complemented with enough "uncommon" artifacts, they present incomplete (if entertaining) portraits...
...Well, the old maxim applies: There are no stupid questions...
...Xerxes, Darius, Alcibiades, Brutus, and Nero wore black ones...
...Or how gracefully Gerald Ford punted footballs...
...Consider the first scene of the exhibit, copied right out of Norman Rockwell: Two windows trimmed in moth-munched lace, and set in a wallpapered wall...
...At one moment, we see Ronald Reagan gracefully diving from a pier...
...only a warm sense of familiarity...
...Resting on one windowsill, a 14-inch television runs a silent film called Future Presidents at Play...
...in the next, there's John F Kennedy bumping elbows with friends...
...The artifacts paint quirky, humble portraits of men when they were boys in love with summertime and berib-boned young ladies...
...All of which are nice, and can ground the presidents as real people in children's imaginations...
...Visitors will learn tidbits hard to find elsewhere, such as what 16-year-old Barbara wrote (in a Katherine Eastland is an intern at The Weekly Standard...
...Memories" and the rest of "School House" lack an element of the heroic...
...In the other window are black-and-white snapshots, including one of five-year-old Jimmy Carter feeding his pony, Lady Lee...
...Departing the show, neither the child nor the adult comes away in awe of, or even with a deeper respect for, the presidency...
...The ordinary abounds...
...Such people as Hannibal, Caesar, Pericles, Socrates, Themistocles, Miltiades, and Leonidas were my white hats, my heroes...
...Children would do well to follow this passion for reading...
...And yes, every passing child opens and closes all nine to see pictures of the presidents with their sports teams...
...At the end of "School Houses" some effort is made to connect the boys with the men they became...
...In the adjacent room, painted Ticonderoga yellow and lined with old-fashioned desks, there are scores of report cards...
...One comes from the pencil of an eighth-grader who, years later, would be faced with the decision to "drop the nukes...
...Yet instead of filling its space with more documents like this, the exhibit keeps on showing things like Bill Clinton's "Stardusters" music stand, Gerald Ford's letter sweater, a photo of the Bushes, 41 and 43, in matching outfits, and lots of diplomas...
...But here we find the common divorced from the uncommon...
...We'll buy a copy on the way home...
Vol. 12 • August 2007 • No. 45
