Reviving Washington, One School At a Time
Fairfax Students Are First to Get Portrait

By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sharing a stage with first lady Laura Bush and a portrait of George Washington, fifth-grader Damian Floyd acknowledged that many children have only a hazy image of the first president. Many believe he wore a wig, had wooden teeth and chopped down his father's cherry tree.

"We know the man on a quarter and a dollar bill," Damian told 500 classmates who were sitting cross-legged in the gymnasium of Washington Mill Elementary School in southern Fairfax County. But, he asked, "Who was the real George Washington?"

Historians at Mount Vernon, two miles from the school, are concerned that many children who visit the founding father's restored mansion each year can offer few factual answers to the question. They are hoping to raise his currency among 21st-century students by distributing his likeness in schools across the country and disseminating background information on the man who led the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, chaired the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and established the precedent of serving no more than two terms as president.

Washington's framed image was once a common sight in American schools but has largely disappeared from classrooms, said James C. Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens.

More troubling, Rees said, is that Washington's life and times have been pared down in many elementary school lessons and texts to make room for more study of historical trends. In addition, many educators report that they have scaled back history and social studies to concentrate on math and reading, which are tested under federal education law.

"We want to bring him back, to preserve a more balanced view of history," said Ann Bay, Mount Vernon's associate director for educational programs.

The Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which operates the estate, has raised enough money from private donors to buy 2,000 framed prints, each 30 by 36 inches, of an 1823 portrait by Rembrandt Peale. The association will send a limited-edition portrait, worth more than $200, to any school that requests one, along with an educational kit of biographical information.

The first lady, whose husband is also a George W., kicked off the "George Washington's Return to School" initiative at the presentation of the first portrait to Washington Mill.

Bush told students they could look up to Washington, who was "a normal person, just like you and I are." He had pancakes for breakfast, played with a foxhound named Vulcan and loved to dance and play games, she said. He also, of course, served the nation.

"Every time his country called on him to ask him to do something, he did it," she said. "You can honor George Washington by following his good example of good citizenship."

She said the White House is filled with images of the first president on dozens of paintings, drawings, lamps and clocks.

During the ceremony at the low brick building on Cherry Tree Drive, children with head scarves, corn rows and ponytails clapped along as a fife-and-drum corps played "Yankee Doodle."

Students said they visit Mount Vernon in third grade and learn about Virginia history and the founding fathers in fourth grade.

With Bush and Fairfax School Superintendent Jack D. Dale standing nearby, Damian described some things he had learned about Washington: that he instigated the two-term practice in place today, cultivated thousands of acres of crops and had hundreds of slaves who helped him.

"But unlike other founding fathers, George Washington chose to free them" after his death, Damian said.

After the ceremony, the fifth-grader also said he learned from a recent trip to Mount Vernon that the first president did not wear a wig, although he put powder in his hair, and that he didn't have wooden teeth, although he had dentures made partly of ivory. And the cherry tree? Just a legend.