Pop Quiz: Brian Williams
This just in, from the award-winning news anchor.
by Edutopia Staff
Credit: Corbis
Brian Williams is not your typical deskbound news anchor. As managing editor of NBC Nightly News, Williams frequently departs the narcissistic cocoon of Midtown Manhattan to get to the heart of the story.
For his efforts, he has received four Edward R. Murrow Awards, five Emmy Awards, the duPont-Columbia University Award, and the industry's highest honor, the George Foster Peabody Award. Most were given for his work in New Orleans while covering Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. All were awarded to Williams in only his second year on the job.
What is your idea of a perfect teacher?
Intellectual, excitable, passionate, and flexible.
What was your most memorable school experience?
A high school teacher, Bob Kitson, helping turn my life around. He got me reading the classics.
What was the low point of your school career?
Right before meeting Bob Kitson.
Did you go to public or private school?
Public until Catholic high school.
Where did you fit in your schools' social hierarchies?
Until senior year, I was unrecognizable to most of the student body.
What was your favorite subject?
History.
What is impossible to learn in school?
How to make your way in life.
If you could change one thing about education in America, what would it be?
The teaching of American and world history of the last century and the basics -- we have become more concerned with the individual and less concerned with what they learn.
What should they teach that they don't teach now?
Comprehensive U.S. and world history.
What did you learn today?
I learned, on this sparkling, sunny, crisp day in New York, that the haunting memory of September 11 will never leave us.
What did you teach?
I taught our newsroom a lesson in never being above our audience. A former firefighter buddy told me the stories that are important to him, and I passed along that lesson.
What is in your dream lunch box?
A peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and ice-cold milk.
If you wrote a textbook, what would it be called?
What Is Past Is Prologue: The Lessons History Can Teach Us.
If the prom were tomorrow, whom would you take?
Since Jennifer Aniston appears to have reached a level of happiness in her life, I would take my wife and love of twenty-one years and not waste all those dating years in between.
This article was also published in the September 2007 issue of Edutopia magazine .
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Brian Williams Pop quiz
As a U.S. and world history teacher, I can heartily agree with Mr. Williams' comments. I spend two years (7th and 8th grade) teaching U.S. history from the earliest settlements through modern day. Our children need to learn about the world, but they are citizens of the United States, first and foremost. While some can laugh at Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" segments, where ordinary citizens are asked basic history/government questions and give ridiculous answers, I find it sad and somewhat terrifying that there are people in this country who will one day be government or business leaders and who are appallingly ignorant of their country's history. Even more terrifying is that they find themselves funny in their ignorance.
As Mr. Williams said in the quiz, "What Is Past Is Prologue....". We're not very good at learning lessons from the past, but maybe it's not too late to start.