Word: jeffersonism
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Standardized testing was adopted early in this century, largely in pursuit of what Thomas Jefferson had called an "aristocracy of virtue and talent." Opportunities would be allotted on the basis of what you knew, not whom you knew. Reliance on tests grew, to compensate for the divergent standards in schoolrooms across the country. But tests cannot quantify qualities such as cooperativeness, creativity, or the perseverance a teenager needs to sit down in a two-room shack and do homework every night...
...decision places President Clinton squarely in the middle of a constitutional tug-of-war that U.S. Presidents have fought with the American judiciary since Thomas Jefferson rejected the idea that a sitting President could, or should, be compelled to testify in court. Five recent U.S. Presidents have given testimony in criminal cases. While Presidents Nixon and Reagan testified in courtrooms afterleaving office, Presidents Ford, Carter and Clinton gave videotaped testimony while serving. President Clinton did so in 1996, answering a Whitewater subpoena. In the present case, the Court gave Clinton at least one escape route: the justices gave the federal...
...brought it in was Thomas Jefferson, in his role as architect. Educated in Williamsburg, Virginia, he despised its provincial-English buildings as "rude, mis-shapen piles." Jefferson found his model for a new American architecture in the south of France: a Roman temple, the so-called Maison Carree, or Square House, which he felt exemplified the candid virtues of the old Roman state. It became the basis of his design for the Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, completed in 1799. It was the first temple-form state building to be erected anywhere in 1,500 years--new because...
...values. It found a model in the ancient republics of Greece and Rome. Classicism, says Hughes, gave the country "a language of power and authority and continuity to the past, even though it was so new." The man who adapted classical architecture to the American Arcadia was Thomas Jefferson, whose home, Monticello, Hughes visits. Standing amid the emblems of Jefferson's artistic and scientific achievements, Hughes cites him as the "one person from all the dead Americans that I wish I could talk to" because of "the overwhelmingly attractive cast of his mind...
...show traces how, from Jefferson's time to our own, classical models have shaped our buildings and sculpture, providing symbols for everything from the dollar bill to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The city of Washington was planned and built according to such models, and structures like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial have helped transform the capital into a "historic theme park" laid out to teach Americans the virtues of civilization. In a poignant segment, Hughes stands alongside the black granite walls of the Vietnam Memorial and learns from mourners and visitors what...