By Ronald N. Guy Jr.
Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno, the man with the
prodigious chin and elite car collection, used to do occasional street-side
“Jaywalking” bits where he’d pepper unsuspecting folks with basic history or
general knowledge questions. It
produced some of his best work. There was the Thanksgiving edition where a lady
answered “Benjamin Franklin” when asked which president made Turkey Day a
national holiday and a guy declared that the Pilgrims landed in
“Virginia.” Some of my other favorites
include the guy who couldn’t name the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm
X, the lady who blanked on the number of stars on the American flag, a
young man who didn’t know the home country of the Panama Canal and a high
school student who went to Florida to take a dip in…the Pacific Ocean. Of course how could I forget the lady who,
in an apparent ode to Sarah Palin, thought “Africa” was the largest country in
South America or the young lady who quipped “the restaurant?” when asked where
the Outback was located. Sigh…
This is all quite funny, of course, until you are
overwhelmed with example…after example…after flighty example. At some point the smile fades and irritation
takes over. Could some of these folks
have been so brilliant that they created fictional idiocy to ensure their 15
seconds of fame escaped the editor’s scissors and landed on the small
screen? I suppose, but I fear most of
these folks – flunkies of fundamental knowledge - legitimately walk among
us. They probably even exert influence
over others.
I understand the world is different now. I am also acutely aware of my advancing age.
I’m tucked into the middle generation.
I realize that kids today are far more concerned with Facebook,
smartphones and the latest reality T.V. show than they are about the
Constitution, geography and The History Channel. I probably would have been the same way, but “my generation”,
with the exception of Atari, lacked all the fancy and frivolous distractions of
the electronic world – an age that produces instantaneous information and can
aide learning when the crap doesn’t overwhelm the good stuff.
But that’s no excuse.
Individuals have a responsibility to build a knowledge base about our
country’s history and the world. You don’t have to be a Jeopardy champion, but
you do have to be smarter than a fifth grader (assuming of course you’re older
than fifth graders). We owe it to our forbearers – a term I’m applying loosely
– to understand the contributions they made to our species, our world and our
nation. Knowledge of the past and how
the world fits together provides a sense of self and belonging, inspires
patriotism, promotes understanding and tolerance and diffuses our innate human
tendency to obsess over petty differences at the expense of substantial
similarities. Colonial Williamsburg’s
succinct motto captures the point best: “That the future may learn from the
past.”
Which brings me, latently, to sports. Baltimore Orioles
manger Buck Showalter was “Jaywalking” with prospect Josh Hart recently and
learned the young man didn’t know Orioles legend Frank Robinson. Instead of getting a good chuckle from the
naiveté of his nineteen-year-old ball player, Showalter gave Hart a homework
assignment: write a one-page paper on Mr. Robinson. To Hart’s credit, he
recognized his knowledge gap and completed the assignment.
Baseball isn’t reading, arithmetic or science, but if you
are going to play professional baseball, and especially if you are going to
play for the Orioles, you need to know Frank Robinson. While Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color
barrier in 1947, a slew of stud African American players riding his coattails -
a group that included Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks and, yes, Frank
Robinson - forever solidified the MLB diamond as an equal-opportunity
workplace.
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