I was a little bit encouraged and heartened by the newscasts today. I’m talking about the treatment and reporting about President’s Day. Two of the popular news show reporters on the evening news, when talking about the holiday actually referred to George Washington’s and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

They bantered back and forth and postulated that the holiday actually came about to honor Washington and Lincoln who were both born in the month of February. It was a nice conversation. But then they admitted that President’s Day has changed. Now we kind of honor many of the late U.S. Presidents. Oh well, it was a good start.

There was also another news story about how many of the people randomly chosen by the reporter couldn’t identify who was in the picture shown to them on this President’s day.

I took a couple of my grandchildren to lunch today to celebrate the holiday from school, and I quizzed them about how much they knew about why we have this holiday. Ages 8 to 11. Yes, younger and in the early grades at school. But one is in the advanced placement class. They didn’t know anything about this particular holiday. Where is the history class?

It just bothered me that not only do the news reporters not understand the origin of the day, but the teachers are not passing this knowledge along to the youngsters. It was such a big deal when I was in elementary school.

Oh well, HAPPY PRESIDENT’S DAY!!