Ten most famous Americans: the changing American educational scene
There’s been some hoo-ha in the blogopsphere about a poll asking 2000 high school students to name the ten most famous Americans.
Here was their list:
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%
The fact that Harriet Tubman (a minor figure at best) and Rosa Parks (an influential and courageous person but hardly one of the giants of history) are way up there is no doubt a reflection of diversity education gone amok. And what’s up with the inclusion of Oprah Winfrey?
But in certain respects the students are merely repeating what they’ve learned—look at some history texts and you might think Harriet Tubman was among the ten most famous Americans, based on the amount of attention paid. And the students are far more conversant with history than the reality-challenged Brits of this poll; at least there were no fictional characters on the former’s list.
Much of the outrage I might have had in reaction to the student poll faded when I learned that Presidents and First Ladies were purposely excluded. This makes the exercise far more of a challenge than one might imagine. And note the question asked was not who is “most influential,” “most admired,” or “most important,” merely most famous.
I took the test and this is the result, no doubt reflecting the idiosyncratic interests of my idiosyncratic mind (the selections are not in order of importance, just the way they come to me):
General Sherman
General Patton
Ben Franklin
Thomas Edison
Martin Luther King
Robert Frost
Elvis
Walt Disney
Bill Gates
Henry Kissinger
How did Frost and all those generals sneak in there? Wishful thinking, perhaps. And by the time I got to “Kissinger” I was tired. As it turns out, the students probably have their fingers more firmly on the pulse of America than I do.
Of course, the study wouldn’t be complete without some erudite professor-speak by one of its designers—Sam Wineburg, a Stanford University education and history professor and another fine example of the decline of our educational system into New Age-y babble. When asked to explain the prominence of Winfrey in the poll, this was his response:
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.”
“Kind of,” indeed.
Yesiree, I’ve often thought them symbolically similar. Franklin: statesman, writer, inventor, philosopher, scientist, ambassador, Founding Father. Oprah: actress, TV talk show personality, philanthropist, sometime diet guru. Many venues. Works for me.
So, who would be on your list?
I suppose we should be grateful that Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsay Lohan failed to make the top ten. They’re probably in the top 20.
Amelia Earhart was apparently an incompetent pilot and so completely hopeless at navigation that she was almost killed several times before her ill-fated flight. (That “chicks and maps” thing again, I guess. /g)
But the shocking aspect is no George Washington, no Abraham Lincoln. O tempora! O mores!
PS: irony of ironies: the question posed (“Who would you call the 10 most famous Americans?”) is itself agrammatical. Become a journalist, learn to write good!
Barak Obama
Hillary Clinton
Al Gore
Jimmy Carter
Nancy Pelosi
John Kerry
Chapaquiddick Ted
Michael Moore
Michael Jackson
Just kidding….
You’re not following the rules! I might just give you a zero, but I’m not that mean.
No Presidents allowed!!
Sorry, I didn’t notice that Presidents were explicitly excluded. My bad.
In no particular order
Living:
Oprah Winfrey
Roger Clemens
Obama
John McCain
Fred Thompson
Rush Limbaugh
Tom Cruise
Bill Gates
Warren Buffet
Jerry Seinfeld
Dead
Ben Franklin
Davy Crockett
Daniel Boone
A G Bell
Edison
Lindburgh
J D Rockefeller
McArthur
Babe Ruth
Einstein
neo, does that rule exclude Jimmy Carter? He was an occupant of the White House, but hardly a President.
Neo,
I made my own list before scrolling down — and had all your generals. I’d even put Grant in there.
For the others: Alexander Hamilton, to be sure. And Twain or even Whitman before Frost or Disney, imho. Odd that presidents were out-of-bounds, but Washington obviously should be included as a soldier and leader on his own.
That stupid, stupid list is a product of Liberal Indiscriminanation:
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Thought/hl1020.cfm
Evan Sayet really nails it here.
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You didn’t say whether this should be national or international fame or whether famous can also include the infamous. Here goes in no particular order
John Wayne (as metaphor for GWB)
Marilyn Monroe(of Happy Birthday, Mr President fame)
Andy Warhol (of Che and Marilyn fame)
Ernest Hemmingway (for the intellectuals)
Michael Jackson
George Clooney
Angelina Jolie
Steven Spielburg
Hillary Clinton
Noam Chomsky (just kidding, but you get the drift)
1. General George Washington: Not, primarily, for his leadership during war, but for his integrity to the ideal of a representative republic after the war.
2. Benjamin Franklin: Without whom, there would never have been help from abroad in our fight for independence.
3. General Sherman: Without his recognition that sometimes an ugly thing has to be made to its ugliest before it can be made to end. If not for his insistence in taking war directly to the enemy, that war might never have ended.
4. Lieutenant Colonel Earl “Pete” Ellis (USMC): After Gallipoli in WW1, it was determined by the powers that be in europe that forced amphibious landings against defended beaches was best viewed as a suicidal venture.
If it had not been for the work of Lt. Col. Ellis in 1920, there may well have been no amphibious capability or doctrine developed by the US in time for what had to be done in WW2. Even with that early a start, we didn’t have a functional landing craft adopted until 1940.
5. Henry Ford: Weirdo and a strange duck in lots of ways, but did come up with a functional process to kick the industrial age into the next gear.
6. Susan B. Anthony: As representative of the entire suffrage movement. Without which, I’d have had to deal with strong willed and intelligent mother and sisters who would probably have taken their lack of right to be heard in elections out on me.
7. Martin Luther King: The process had been started by others, but he did valiant work and paid for it. He wasn’t a saint, but no man is.
The rest are just personal favs:
8. Robert E. Howard: I really enjoyed his pulp fiction heroic epic stories as a youngin.
9. Mark Twain: Not the Clemens guy, but his reinvented self.
10. Inventor of milblogs, who ever that was. Without which, we’d have submitted to the will of our domestic cult of cowardice by now.
Here goes Cappy’s selections:
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. Thomas Edison
3. Albert Einstein
4. Philo T. Farnsworth
5. Bill Gates
6. Dwight D. Eisenhower
7. George Washington
8. Paul Brown
9. Franklin D. Roosevelt
10. Jonas Salk
Wow, the Heritage Foundation article linked above was fantastic!! The link ought to be passed around the entire country, twice. The content of that article is reason #983 that I’m homeschooling my four.
Cappy: when last I checked, numbers one, six, seven, and nine are former Presidents. Not allowed!
I can see Martin Luther King Jr and Albert Einstein in the top ten.
I think it’s time for the real Americans (conservatives) to take a work break (200+ years is enough), and go on welfare. If the liberals want the country to remain then let them work, fight and die for it while we lay in the shade and drink beer. But we’ll fight them at every turn to release every child rapist, thug and terrorists on the public so they can handle them with hugs and kisses, that is while they rape they’re children and wives. Give the liberal democrats the rope to hang themselves, and they will hang themselves. I even refuse to cut them down, let them rot in a tree.
neo,
I rarely respond to blogs but this is interesting. My list:
1. Alexander Hamilton
2. Mark Twain
3. Martin Luther King
4. Gideon Blackburn
5. Helen Keller
6. Henry Ford
7. Thomas Alva Edison
8. Susan B. Anthony
9. Elvis Presley
10. Bill Gates
A strange list I know, but each had a special place in American History.
J.P.
P.S. I can tell u are beautiful in spite of the apple.
You mean Oprah isn’t on your top-ten list?
Man, you guys are weird.
Okay, the criterion was “famous” not “great,” and no Presidents allowed. I’m also going to add the criterion “no actors.” And I’m going to go with people who _should_ be famous. That leaves me this:
1. Thomas Edison (Mr. Technology, aka Mr. Self-Promotion)
2. Neil Armstrong (first man to step on the MOON!)
3. Steve Jobs (Edison 2.0)
4. John D. Rockefeller (the ultimate capitalist)
5. Norman Borlaug (back when a Nobel Peace prize meant something)
6. George Marshall (architect of victory in both World War II and the Cold War)
7. Mark Twain (America’s greatest author so far)
8. Benjamin Franklin (architect of liberty)
9. Louis Armstrong (Jazz music was born and died with him)
10. Alexander Hamilton (architect of the nation)
I have a hard time seeing Einstein as a famous American.
He did his best scientific work while employed in a patent office in Europe. However, his signature was one among the group of signatures on the letter to Pres. Roosevelt that birthed the Manhattan Project.
Anyways, my list of American scientists/inventors who ought to be famous, in roughly chronological order:
Benjamin Franklin
George Washington Carver
Samuel F.B. Morse
Alexander Graham Bell
Thomas Edison
Henry Ford
Claude Shannon
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce (Integrated circuit chips)
A similar list could probably be constructed for military men (including a few who later became President). Or those who had great cultural/literary/musical achievements.
The list is of course its own evidence of who is the most famous. Whoever people think of to vote for are by definition the most famous people. What the list reveals about the mind of the country is something else again. We tend to think of who deserves to be most famous. That list should perhaps include Norman Borlaug, Jonas Salk, and Henry Ford. Sports and entertainment figures are certainly famous, but we would be entertained by someone else in their slots had they not existed, so they did not change America much.
Franklin and Hamilton get the added benefit of founder effect, directing the young plant in its growth. William Seward talked the government into buying Alaska – that has to count for something.
The fact that they asked for “the most famous” instead of “the greatest” or the “most noteworthy,”is telling in and of itself…about the pollsters, not the students. Who really gives a fat flip who is “famous?’ Why is that even important? But since we’re answering the question that wasn’t asked…
1. Billy Graham
2. Hemingway
3. Steinbeck
3. Jonathan Edwards
4. Albert Einstein
5. Bill Gates
6. Ella Fitzgerald
7. Frank Sinatra
8. John Marshall
9. Ben Franklin
9. Edison
And todays young Americans can’t count either!
Who should be famous?
Edwin Armstrong (most of the foundation technologies of analog radio transmission), Claude Shannon (Communication Theory and Information Theory, IMO far more important than the transistor), Bardeen, Brattain, and Shockley (invented the transistor, though Shockley later became known for promulgating ‘scientific’ racisism; they shared a Nobel Prize for their invention and Bardeen shared a second Physics Nobel for the foundation physics of superconductivity), J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the development of ENIAC and much of the foundation technology of computing electronics), Winfield Scott (one of history’s great natural generals, also a student of both war and the classics, under whom both Grant and Lee learned war), Williard Gibbs (vector mechanics and thermodynamics in chemical reactions), John Hall (chief armorer at Harper’s Ferry who demonstrated the use of automated machine tools for mass production), Sam Colt (who first made mass production by interchangeable parts profitable), etc., etc., etc.
You really can’t limit it to ten. How about the inventor of the clipper ship? Or John Holland, whose last work bears his name? John and Washington Roebling, who changed the way people look at rivers and chasms? Peter Cooper, whose personal industry created products that became part of the fabric of society and whose thrift and generosity not only endowed a school but inspired Carnegie, Vassar, and Cornell to do the same? How about Orville and Wilbur Wright, visionaries and yet careful and thorough experimenters who created aviation?
Give me a day and I’ll stretch the list into the hundreds.
I. William Penn
2. Benjamin Franklin
3. Benedict Arnold
4. Robert E. Lee
5. Stonewall Jackson
6. Alexander Graham Bell
7. George Armstrong Custer
8. Henry Ford
9.Thomas Edison
10. George Marshall
I believe the names of these individuals will live on long after the names of our contemporaries are no longer even a footnote.
Here’s my shot. It’s a tougher exercise than I thought. Emphasis on “famous” and “famous in American history” as I imagine that now.
All these figures are iconic.
Andy Warhol
Benjamin Franklin
Bill Gates
Elvis Presley
Humphrey Bogart
Jacqueline Kennedy
Marilyn Monroe
Mark Twain
Martin Luther King
Walt Disney
In alphabetical order:
Abraham Lincoln
Albert Einstein
Bill Gates
Christopher Hitchens
Karl Marx
Martin Luther King, Jr
Pablo Picasso
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Paine
Winston Churchill
Was there not a poll that showed that 70% of American High School students thought that Latin was the language spoken in Latin America? It is wondereful when “education” accomplishes the impossible: political correctness and a total lack of knowledge, a two-fer.
Babe Ruth
Neal Armstrong
Benjamin Franklin
Albert Einstein
Elvis Presley
Charles Lindbergh
Muhammad Ali
Marylin Monroe
The Wright Brothers
Thomas Edison
Ayn Rand
Douglas MacArthur
Edward Teller
John Edgar Hoover
Joseph Raymond McCarthy
Henry Ford
Milton Friedman
Neil Armstrong
Richard Phillips Feynman
Robert Oppenheimer
Great lists – especially when you consider “fame” is the criterion, not importance, wealth, power, goodness, or even usefulness.
The kids’ list was obviously regurgitated pabulum – they were saying what they thought their teachers and society at large would approve of. Good little citizens, every one.
I do find it interesting that Marilyn Monroe keeps popping up in these lists – both the kids’ and commenters – though I suspect it’s because of her image and the JFK connection rather than her movies (perhaps I’m being overly cynical, but if more than five percent of those 2000 students could name one Monroe movie, I’d be surprised).
Still, what’s the definition of “famous?” That they got a lot of press coverage? By that standard, Aimee Semple McPherson fills the category rather nicely. As do Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, whose worldwide popularity was second only to Chaplin’s in the ‘teens and early twenties.
My ten famous Americans? Leaving out politicians and actors takes a wide chunk out. But, in no particular order, I’d name:
1. Benjamin Banneker (a sentimental fave)
2. Philip Glass
3. Elvis (for music, not his films)
4. Edison
5. Ford
6. George Gershwin
7. Walt Kelly
8. James McNeill Whistler
9. George Kaufman
10.Bennett Cerf
But that’s just off the top of my head and reflects my own predilections at the moment.
And note the question asked was not who is “most influential,” “most admired,” or “most important,” merely most famous.
With that observation, you put your finger on what is wrong with this survey. It’s not about great or important people; it’s about celebrities.
So my answer to your question (“Who would be on your list?”) is: no one, because I would never waste my time compiling a list of celebrities. And I’m disgusted that high school students are being asked to waste their time on something as inane as this.
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Several good names on the above lists. I’d add:
John Moses Browning.
Sam Colt.
Davy Crockett.
Sam Houston.
General MacArthur.
General Winfield Scott.
Gen. Custer.
Gen. Pershing.
The fact that Amelia Earhart makes the cut, while Lindberg, the Wright brothers, and aces like Eddie Rickenbaker, Frank Luke, and others don’t make it is telling.
or Chuck Yeager
Dave, I think Bendict Arnold is an inspired choice- Infamous is certainly famous, and when your name becomes synonomous with your product (kleenex-tissue, xerox-copies, Benedict Arnold-treason), you’re pretty famous. Few others above mentioned can claim that.
Nyomythus, Marx, Picasso, and Churchill were not Americans. Hitchens, just barely.
As an architect, I must toss Frank Lloyd Wright’s name into the ring. It seems most lists do reflect the originators idiosyncracies more than a sense of general fame. Perhaps the kids are more on target in this regard, but I agree, it’s a senseless question.
I was taking liberty to include influential people in general, doh.
# nyomythus Says:
February 12th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
or Chuck Yeager
I had Al Capone & Chuck Yeager on my original list. I dropped Yeager because he is more a personal hero than a ‘famous” person. I dropped Capone because his fame (infamy) was more national than world-wide.
I dropped them & added Ali & the Wright Brothers. both have huge world wide fame.
Real quick this is what came to mind:
1. George Washington
2. Abraham Lincoln
Real quick this is what came to mind:
1. George Washington
2. Abraham Lincoln
3. Robert E. Lee
4. Andrew Carnegie
5. Thomas Edison
6. Theodore Roosevelt
7. Dwight Eisenhower
8. Alexander Graham Bell
9. Albert Einstein
10. Ronald Reagan
1 Benjamin Franklin
2 Alexander Hamilton
3 Aron Burr
4 Nathaniel Hawthorne
5 Davy Crockett
6 Harriet Beecher Stowe
7 Thomas Alva Edison
8 Cornelius Vanderbilt
9 John D Rockefeller
10 The James Brothers (William and Henry)
I decided to do a pre-WWI list since only time gives proper perspective. I also left off Presidents and Generals. Tenth place is a tie if we still consider Henry an American.
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What is likely to be on the list of the kiddies today are people the Gramscians have approved of: people who are more likely than not to be critics of our history, culture, and religious traditions. We now have two full generations, and counting, of kids who are assiduously taught to despise their culture and nation.
No wonder the 7th century savages, those minions of Allah, have been invited in to ravage our civilization. We have no sense of its value anymore. Well, at least some of the Baby Boomers like myself, who recovered from the Left, surely do appreciate its worth and know who those people are who have been the best to contribute to it.
Remember, Oprah Windfrey (Ooops! – a slip) Winfrey introduced and advanced Barack Hussein Obama to her audiences and beyond.