by Nathan Nowatney
February 19, 2016
Celebrations were had for President’s Day, but not many know why we celebrate it, or who some of these debatably great men even were…
So, I took it upon myself to find out what our students knew about FDR and the ‘New Deal’.
For those of you who don’t know, FDR is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his ‘New Deal’ was an act to attempt to reconstruct the economy during the great depression. The New Deal ended up giving us several services still in operation today, the most notable: social security.
So, to find out what our students knew, I randomly selected classrooms and looked for participants. I asked them two simple questions.
- What does FDR mean to you?
And,
2. What is the ‘New Deal’?
Here is what I got.
What does FDR mean to you?
“I don’t know.”
“What is FDR? ”
“Franklin D. Roosevelt”
“Federal Driving Reserve”
“What’s FDR?”
“A president.”
“Friends? I don’t know.”
“What’s that?”
“Fun Delicious Roses.”
What was the ‘New Deal’?
“What does that mean?”
“The new deal is… John Cena.”
“The new deal is… It’s a deal where… Dogs can have a home and not be abused… ever.”
“Something to do with legislation, to make the country better. ”
“Never heard of it. ”
“It’s got something to do with school. “
“I’m guessing it might be another word for ‘the square deal’.”
“Shoes.”
“Something new.”
“The new deal for what?”
“Uhhhmm… I don’t know.”
In conclusion, not many know about presidential history in our school, though I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of them did know FDR (although I didn’t repeat duplicate answers). But the question is… does it matter if we know or we don’t know? That’s up to you. Until next time.
