Unfortunately, it's a gene that has been passed along to my sons.
Martin and Casey saw the nation's capital for the first time... and whatever excitement there might have been was extremely muted. Sure, it could be argued that spending the first six hours of the day in a minivan may have sapped some of the enthusiasm out of them. I'm still going with their genetic predisposition to encounter something awe inspiring, nod their head and say, "Cool."
Panda's? Cool. Washington Monument? Cool. Cherry blossoms? Cool.
It is always interesting to see a kid's reaction to seeing things live that they've only seen on television (or, these days, online). Casey has long listed panda's as his favorite animal, and suddenly, there they were... right in front of him. He honestly didn't seem sure how to react to that.
He had a better idea of how to react when we were by the sea lions underwater viewing area and one became interested in Casey. For about a minute, the sea lion and Casey interacted with each other through the glass. If the sea lion was trying to get us to spring him, unfortunately, we couldn't get that on our side.
While having the boys see the National Mall and the monuments was fun (well, you know, watching closely to see if you can discern a reaction is kind of amusing), what was scary was finding out how little about history gets taught in school's now.
Maybe I'm nuts, but I figured that at least by 6th grade -- which Martin is in -- that the Constitution would've come up at some point. Neither son knew what it was. "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility?" I tried. Blank stares.
We walked past the Vietnam Memorial. "What do you know about the Vietnam War?" I asked. "It was a war," Casey offered back. That led to stopping and a quick lesson about the cost of war... especially since the father of our guide -- an art history professor who is kind enough to allow us to stay at her apartment in Georgetown -- fought in Vietnam. I told them to really stop and think about the fact that each of the names on the wall was a real person... with parents, siblings, friends, etc. That the 58,000-plus names carved there go far beyond just a collection of letters.
Slightly better was the Lincoln Memorial, if only because it's featured prominently in the movie "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian." By that point, I was just happy that they could identify a president.
As with the other stops, the boys seemingly had only the barest idea of what Lincoln had done. That's why it's handy that the Gettysburg Address is so short... it makes it easy to read the engraving out loud. Do I think that either of them fully grasp the impact of words like "that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth"? No, not really. I'm now at least certain that they've heard it, though, and that's a start.
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