As students across the USA ready their books and lunch boxes and wrap up summer vacations, it is hard to imagine that America’s presidents once had their own school routines that shaped them – and eventually the nation.
They all developed in different settings, with different ways of learning reading, writing and other skills. Schools in the colonial era and the education provided varied widely.
Even today, each president’s back-to-school routines look a little different, regardless of where or how, all of them managed to hone leadership skills and rise to the top.
America’s first president, George Washington, did not get the same classical education as his older half-brothers, who, like other affluent children of the day, were sent to Latin-based schools in England. Back in the New World, young George tackled practical subjects like geometry (from about age 14) and trigonometry, skills that later proved useful when he began his career as a surveyor.
John Adams’ back-to-school years started early, with what was common in the 18th and 19th centuries in both the “old” and new worlds. He attended a so-called dame school, where women, often widows, taught the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic in their homes.
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Schooling by parents or neighbors in their own homes remained common for decades. By 1830, just more than half of children ages 5 to 14 attended public schools in America. By 1870, the number had risen to just above three-quarters.
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln wanted more for their children than they could offer at home, so during winters when the children were not needed to work the farm, Abraham and his sister, Sarah, walked several miles a day to paid “subscription” schools in Kentucky and Indiana. Each one lasted only about two months. The president, proudly known as “self-taught,” later recalled his education came “by littles” that “did not amount to one year.”
Future President Herbert Hoover went “back to school” with his siblings at a small public school in West Branch, Iowa. His teachers, as he later put it, showed “infinite patience and kindness.” Hoover later went on to be the youngest member of the very first graduating class at Stanford University in California, according to Constituting America.
By the time Dwight D. Eisenhower attended public school, he did so – as did many then and now – at a school named for another president. In Eisenhower’s case, Lincoln Elementary in Abilene, Kansas.
Before going into politics, Lyndon Johnson took time off from Southwest Texas State Teachers College (which is now Texas State University) for a year, teaching fifth through seventh graders. And while he moved into politics soon after graduating, Johnson said the job taught him that education is the key to success as well as “the key to meaning in life.”
Gerald Ford is said to have done exceptionally well in history and government classes in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and in gym classes. In high school, Ford was named part of the Grand Rapids all-city football team. He went on to play center at the University of Michigan.
Jimmy Carter, famously of small-town Plains, Georgia, credited his high school teacher Julia Coleman with urging him to learn to debate and to love books, and honored her in the opening lines of his inaugural address: “We attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say, ‘We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.’ ”
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What did Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton have in common in their younger days? Music. Nixon learned and loved the violin; Clinton played saxophone in his school band in Hot Springs, Arkansas, saying later, “I don’t think I would have become president if it hadn’t been for school music.”
Of course, Clinton also won elected office – on the student council and as freshman and sophomore class president.
Whatever path a school opens for someone, it’s a foundation for life. So, a good back-to-school time, everyone. You never know where it may lead.
Stewart D. McLaurin is president of the White House Historical Association, a private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization founded by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961. The Association helps young people discover and share history through K-12 education resources, programs and partnerships.
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