Local author’s book reveals presidents as students and teachers

A new book by professor of education and chair of the Education Department of Washington and Jefferson College explores the student and teaching experiences of presidents and first ladies from George and Martha Washington to Barack and Michelle Obama. Dr. James McMurtry Longo will premier his new book From Classroom to White House: The Presidents and First Ladies as Students and Teachers at the Peters Township Public Library on Saturday, December 10 from 10-11:00 a.m. A book signing will follow the event. Seating is limited and registration is requested. To reserve your seat, please register online, visit the library circulation desk, or call 724.941.9430.

During his more than a decade of research, interviews, and travel, Longo discovered that few White House residents made model students. President Eisenhower, who was not always the best student, once wrote, “One cannot always read a man’s future in the record of his younger days.” Teachers reported that John F. Kennedy could “seldom locate his possessions,” found George H.W. Bush “somewhat eccentric,” and dubbed a sixth-grade Bill Clinton “a motormouth.” In addition to chronicling the school days of these historic figures, this volume also relates their teaching experiences, the educational issues they addressed during their White House years, and the intricacies of education at their time in history, providing an informative overview of American schooling over time.

Half the presidents and first ladies taught, but Professor Longo believes that if by some magical time machine all the presidents and first ladies could be transported back to their days as students - they would be a teacher’s worse nightmare. Stu Bryer of WICH radio in Norwich, Connecticut has called the book “fascinating” and a “must read”. Another reviewer wrote, “This is a book that gives hope to any parent of an underachieving child – and a big tip of the hat to teachers that make a difference in a student’s life.” Bill Bertenshaw from WOR Newsradio in New York said, “Great book…hard to put down…I learned more about history and the presidents and first ladies from this book than all the history classes I took in school.”

Dr. James McMurtry Longo is an award-winning teacher, storyteller, Fulbright scholar, and Chair of the Education Department at Washington and Jefferson College. He grew up in St. Louis, majored in History at the University of Missouri in St. Louis, worked as a public school teacher for over a decade, and earned his doctorate in education from Harvard University.

Longo has taught on three continents where he has lectured on the educational experiences of White House residents from Austria and Brazil, to Costa Rica and England. This is his seventh book. His previous book, Isabel Orleans-Braganza-The Brazilian Princess Who Freed the Slaves, was nominated for Yale University’s Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the “Most outstanding non-fiction book in English on the subject of slavery and abolition.”