Like other historians, I joined in the discussion on social media. My No. 1 would have been George Washington (No. 2 in the survey). I think both Thomas Jefferson (No. 7) and John F. Kennedy (No. 8) were too high. Warren Harding (No. 37) was too low. And how does William Henry Harrison (No. 40), who fell ill and died a month into his term, get rated at all? It’s not fair. He didn’t know what germs are!

It made for a fun afternoon conversation. Unfortunately, many in the public took the rankings seriously and viewed the results as major news. For people who like to talk about how “history will judge” the people shaping current events, here was an example of historians judging our leaders.

It’s a mistake to take presidential rankings as anything other than entertainment.

It’s a mistake to take presidential rankings as anything other than entertainment, however. They’re the presidential history buff’s version of sports debates such as who is the greatest NBA star, Michael Jordan or LeBron James, and whether Tom Brady is the greatest football player of all time. When taken lightly, they’re a way to connect with people who share a passion. But when taken seriously, presidential rankings mislead more than they enlighten.

The systematic ranking of presidents was invented by Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. in 1948. He asked various experts to place the presidents in categories such as “great,” “near great,” “average,” “below average” and “failure.”

The C-SPAN survey asked experts to assess each president on a scale from 1–10 in areas such as “public persuasion,” “crisis leadership,” “economic management,” “international relations” and “administrative skills.” The methodology seems more precise than Schlesinger’s original survey, but it is just as impressionistic. C-SPAN offered no guidance on what each term was supposed to mean. Participants were, the survey reports, left to “interpret them as they see fit to determine their rankings.”

Beyond the methodological issues, the criteria themselves are suspect because of their inherent presentism. They reflect a modern understanding of what the presidency should be. Take, for example, “economic management.” When Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign said “It’s the economy, stupid!,” the line stuck because by then people expected a president to manage the economy.

For 19th-century presidents, though, suggesting the president ought to “manage” the economy would have made no sense. Yes, every candidate for office has always wanted prosperity, and like all politicians everywhere, early presidents liked to take credit for good times and blame their opponents for bad times. But the kind of day-to-day intervention implied by “economic management” is a 20th century invention. Early presidents will always fair poorly as a result.

The survey’s categories also lead people to focus on small differences between presidents rather than the major challenges of their times. The criteria called “pursued equal justice for all” is especially problematic. If taken literally, presidents who served before the 13^th Amendment (1865) abolished slavery all failed. True, some presidents opposed slavery, such as John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, but many more were slave owners. More to the point, voters accepted slavery so widely—and viewed abolition so suspiciously—that no one running for president before the Civil War could have won election if they had truly pursued equal justice for the country’s millions of enslaved men and women. Giving John Quincy Adams a few more points than, say, James Monroe in this category masks the larger reality of slavery’s place in the nation. Sometimes, presidents don’t make that much of a difference.

Schlesinger began presidential rankings in the hope that history could teach lessons about what makes a good leader, but his creation turned out to be more about memorialization than history. The rankings are a kind of monument to great leaders on paper or in pixels rather than in stone. Memorialization often relies on history, but it’s not the same thing. History is the study of the past, seeking to understand people on their own terms. Memorialization is a statement made by people in the present, about what they value in the present.

There’s nothing wrong with memorialization per se. Everyone wants to be remembered well, and we need role models to inspire us. Yet, it’s important not to confuse the two because a high score in the rankings doesn’t tell us much about what we really want to know: how a president led given the enormous complexity of his time.

Presidential rankings can be fun. They encourage discussion and can inspire people to learn more. They should not be seen as anything else — certainly not a definitive judgment on any president’s leadership.

David Head is an associate lecturer of history at Â鶹ԭ´´. He can be reached at David.Head@ucf.edu.

The Â鶹ԭ´´ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on Â鶹ԭ´´ Today and then broadcast on WÂ鶹ԭ´´-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Columns are archived in the campus library’s collection and as WÂ鶹ԭ´´ podcasts. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the Â鶹ԭ´´.

George Washington, the man who invented the inauguration speech, crafted an address that speaks to what unites Americans.

Washington took office in a precarious moment. The previous government, the Articles of Confederation, had failed and nothing guaranteed there would be a second president if Washington faltered. Washington’s words as he assumed office announced his goal: a nation unified despite its deep disagreements.

His inauguration took place in New York City, then the country’s capital, on April 30, 1789. Congress, though supposed to meet in early March to certify the results of the presidential election, couldn’t muster a quorum until April. The delay revealed the indifference of the new representatives and senators toward the new government. Rhode Island and North Carolina didn’t send any representatives at all. They hadn’t ratified the Constitution yet.

The sole required part of a president’s inauguration is to recite a specific oath of office. But over the spring, as Washington saw he would be elected president, he decided he should also give a public address.

According to the Constitution, the sole required part of a president’s inauguration is to recite a specific oath of office. But over the spring, as Washington saw he would be elected president, he decided he should also give a public address.

Washington’s speech followed his taking the oath, which he completed publicly while standing on the second-floor balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street. As the crowd cheered and huzzahed its acclaim, he repaired inside to address Congress.

The speech itself was brief. A mere 1,400 words, it might have taken less than 10 minutes to deliver. The speech advocated no specific policies. But what Washington lacked in innovative ideas, he made up for in his vision of the nation’s destiny.

“Among the vicissitudes incident to life,” , “no event could have filled me with greater anxieties” than learning he would become president. He felt unequal to the task, he said, but he could not resist being “summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love.” Washington, who hungered for fame as much as any renowned leader, played coy, but with a purpose: He signaled that he was not ambitious for power as famous men often were or as liberty-loving Americans feared.

Fortunately for our democracy, he demonstrated that America and its president would be something different.

Washington continued with an exhortation to unity. But he didn’t lecture his audience or shame people for their disagreements. He didn’t offer sappy bromides that no rough-and-tumble politician believes. Instead, he recalled the shared sacrifice of the revolution and what he saw as God’s providential care for guiding the United States, his words turning his listeners’ minds to what they’d accomplished together and to the beliefs they shared.

“No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States,” the president said. “Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

Washington didn’t need to state the implications outright: Just as the nation had achieved its independence together, it could launch the new government together.

After a brief allusion to a Bill of Rights and his promise to accept no salary but only reimbursement for his expenses, Washington closed by once more invoking “the benign parent of the human race.” He called for divine blessing on officials whose “enlarged views” along with “temperate consultations” would frame “the wise measures on which the success of this government must depend.”

That’s the spirit presidents should always emulate: a humble symbol of unity. Washington’s words are a reminder of what the American people have accomplished, his manner serious but hopeful.

It’s a difficult task. A president is a political figure, and politics means making choices that anger some people. But presidents should speak — especially on Inauguration Day — with devotion to the country, including the people who didn’t vote for them.

David Head is an associate lecturer of history at Â鶹ԭ´´. He can be reached at David.Head@ucf.edu.

The Â鶹ԭ´´ Forum is a weekly series of opinion columns from faculty, staff and students who serve on a panel for a year. A new column is posted each Wednesday on Â鶹ԭ´´ Today and then broadcast on WÂ鶹ԭ´´-FM (89.9) between 7:50 and 8 a.m. Sunday. Opinions expressed are those of the columnists, and are not necessarily shared by the Â鶹ԭ´´.

The solution is not intrusive technology; it’s better pedagogy. And the critical players are not online proctors working for a tech company, but faculty members taking charge of their virtual classrooms.

Without anyone to watch students take a test, though, how can anyone ensure students don’t succumb to temptation?

The battle against cheating has many fronts, but faculty can push back in how they design assignments, how they plan courses, and how they formulate program curriculum.

The most vulnerable point in an online class is a multiple-choice test. One option might be to avoid multiple choice tests and offer written assignments only. However, papers are susceptible to their own honesty problems and the time commitment to grading written work can be overwhelming in a class of 50, let alone 500.

Fortunately, tests can be constructed in any number of ways to combat cheating.

Fortunately, tests can be constructed in any number of ways to combat cheating.

Running a test for only a short period, allowing a short amount of time to complete a test, randomizing questions and answer choices, and drawing questions from a larger pool of potential questions are all easily done in most learning-management systems. These techniques make it harder for students to collaborate.

Students looking online for answers takes more effort to frustrate, but it can be done. A question that asks for simple recall begs to be Googled. Questions that ask for analysis are tougher for a cheater to crack, especially if operating under a time crunch.

I’m a history professor, and students often expect to be quizzed on names and dates. Looking up names and dates is easy to do on Wikipedia so I avoid that when I can.

Sometimes, I do ask simple recall questions—like, say, “What was the Whiskey Rebellion a protest against?”

More often, though, I’ll ask something such as: “In which of the following ways was the Whiskey Rebellion different from Shays’ Rebellion?”

Sure, a student could Google an answer, but they’d have to look up two items, figure out how they were similar, and compose an answer. Do that too often and the student will run out of time.

I also like to make up scenarios with invented people to get at some mentality that was common in the past.

For example, I’ll use a question like this to check understanding of what motivated New England soldiers during the American Revolution: “Colonel Hezekiah Smith, the officer in charge of a company from Connecticut, has just received an order from General Washington to attack the British line during a Revolutionary War battle. What will the officer’s response likely be?”

Good luck searching for Colonel Smith! He’s not real. But the idea tested is: New England soldiers fought for liberty, but they thought of “liberty” as governing themselves via consensus.

One of the best compliments I’ve received on a course evaluation was a complaint from a student who moaned that tests were unfair because he couldn’t find the answers anywhere on Google.

One of the best compliments I’ve received on a course evaluation was a complaint from a student who moaned that tests were unfair because he couldn’t find the answers anywhere on Google.

Beyond test questions, course design helps limit cheating, too.

A course with only a midterm, final, and maybe a paper might encourage students to cheat because so much rides on each test.

Spreading the overall course grade across many different assignments lessens the impact of any individual one.

Yet, the penalty stays the same: failing the course, possibly with a marker for academic dishonesty attached to the transcript. Who wants that for taking a shortcut on one small quiz?

A well-designed curriculum also curbs cheating, again by lessening high-stakes tests and changing the incentives.

Maybe some programs need high-stakes tests and gatekeeping courses to weed out weak students. I certainly want my doctor to know biochemistry and it’s probably a good idea for engineers to know their math. History is not quite the same. A grade of C in one of my classes won’t derail anyone’s dream of being a pediatrician.

Still, many fields could design their programs so that students show their abilities over a long arc of coursework and across many different assignments so that no one test determines a student’s fate.

Whether online or face-to-face, teaching is ultimately about the relationship between a particular instructor and a particular group of students gathered for a particular time and purpose. Reducing the temptation to cheat is ultimately a side benefit of well-designed curriculum, courses and assignments.

Such planning fosters the unique relationships between teacher and student and encourages learning.

And that’s more important than any test.

David Head is a lecturer in the Â鶹ԭ´´ Department of History.

Did you know? It took six months for all the signatures to be compiled for the Declaration of Independence.

His inspiration for keeping history alive?

“My mom,” says Head. “She wrote down everything that happened to my five siblings and me, and turned it into a daily calendar so we’d never forget the facts.”

Here are some facts he’s shared about our nation’s founding

1. The Declaration of Independence was not signed on July 4

Thomas Jefferson presented a draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence in the days before July 4, 1776. The full Congress debated, revised and edited the document on July 2 and July 3. By July 4, they ratified the wording. But the formal copy of the Declaration of Independence wasn’t officially finalized until two weeks later and it wasn’t signed until August 2. John Trumbull’s famous painting of Jefferson, John Hancock, John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Roger Sherman does not depict the signing — it is them presenting the draft on June 28, 1776.

2. Attendance for the signing wasn’t so great

With no FedEx available, the document stayed in Philadelphia until each of the 56 delegates could eventually travel there by horse. It would take six months for all the signatures to be compiled. Thomas McKean of Delaware was the last person to sign, possibly as late as 1777 (the actual date is disputed), though some copies of the declaration do not have McKean’s name on them.

3. About the signers

Two 26-year-olds from South Carolina were the youngest to sign the Declaration of Independence (Thomas Lynch Jr., and Edward Rutledge). Benjamin Franklin, 70, was the oldest. Eight of the men were born in the British Isles. They were lawyers, of course, but also businessmen, farmers, teachers, and a minister (John Witherspoon of New Jersey). Two signers were inventors of similarly named musical instruments that never caught on (Francis Hopkinson with the Bellarmonic, and Benjamin Franklin with the glass armonica).

4. Nine of the signers died before independence was officially won

Between 1776 and 1783, when the states achieved independence, nine of the signers died — some in bizarre circumstances. Button Gwinnett of Georgia, died in a duel over conduct in a battle. And 26-year-old Thomas Lynch Jr., who was one of the two youngest to sign, drowned in a storm on his way to France.

5. There were other declarations of independence

In early 1776, there seemed to be no end to the war and little hope for reconciliation with England. So a number of localities and colonies produced their own statements about independence. The authors were judges, politicians, even laborers. Turns out, the sentiments in the official Declaration of Independence are very similar to the declarations at the local levels.

6. The first celebration was short-lived

As the declaration was being read to the Continental Army troops on July 9, they were on the verge of being routed by the British Army. The troops and their faithful had just enough time to tear down the two-ton statue of George III in New York and send it up the East River to Connecticut, where its pieces were melted into musket balls.

7. The document almost became worthless

The British had George Washington’s troops trapped in New York City — almost. Washington found an escape route, crossed the Delaware River and regrouped before going back on the offensive. Had the British been more aggressive and cut off Washington in Manhattan, the war could have been lost, the Declaration of Independence would have been nothing but evidence of treason — and there’s no telling what kind of history we’d be talking about today.

“I watched every Friday night with my older brother — 10 episodes in all,” Head said.

Through the years, his interest in the high-seas robbers led him to study and write about the plunderers and how they thrived in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Head, who teaches courses in American history and western civilization, came out with his latest book on the subject this year, an edited collection of essays, The Golden Age of Piracy: The Rise, Fall, and Enduring Popularity of Pirates (University of Georgia Press).

To help commemorate International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is observed Sept. 19, we walked the plank with Head and asked about the scurvy rogues who wrote their own rules — but who today are often viewed as lovable characters.

Do you find that most people have a romantic fascination about pirates?

To me the really interesting thing is that the fascination goes back hundreds of years, at least to the 17th century, when plenty of real pirates sailed the seas. In (The Golden Age of Piracy), several essays address this question, with answers ranging from the propensity of English audiences to enjoy reading about their enemies, such as the Spanish getting plundered, or middle- and upper-class men living out fantasies of manly adventure through pirate stories. Today’s fascination with Talk Like A Pirate Day and pirate festivals has to have something to do with the popularity of Comic-Con and cosplay and adults dressing up like fictional characters.

Just how would you define a pirate?

Defining piracy is really hard. It’s one of the most debated parts of studying pirates. At it’s heart, piracy was robbery at sea; that is, the forcible taking of property from its lawful owner by people who know they have no right to the property. The problem is that a lot things that could be piracy don’t quite fit each of those elements. For example, privateers were vessels commissioned by a government during times of war to capture enemy property. They took goods by force like pirates, but they had a license to do so. Navies, too, captured property by force. So taking by force alone wasn’t piracy.

How would you describe the golden age of piracy? And when was it?

Historians differ in the application of the term, but I think of the golden age of piracy as describing the major waves of piracy associated with the Caribbean in the 17th and early 18th centuries. These are the pirates that most people think of as pirates — the pirates of Treasure Island and Pirates of the Caribbean. The idea of a golden age of piracy is as much about the legends of piracy as it is about the reality of pirate life, so I like how that description encompasses both sides.

How did they become so prominent and what led to their decline?

A combination of geopolitical factors came together in the 17^th century to make piracy widespread in the Caribbean, and as the geopolitics changed over time, piracy also changed. A big part of the story was the fact that Spain claimed virtually all of the Americas — from Canada to Chile — as a result of Columbus’ discoveries. Spain defined all non-Spanish vessels anywhere in the Americas, sailing for any purpose, as pirates. The vessels could be captured and their crews executed. Spain’s rivals denied its claim to exclusive ownership of such vast territory and tried to fight their way in.

England, France and the Netherlands all sponsored raids, some more official than others, to challenge Spain’s dominance. Henry Morgan — of rum fame — was an example of an English raider who operated with the blessing of the Jamaican governor. At the end of the 17th century, Spain was forced to recognize the legitimacy of its rivals’ colonies and the era of raiding as statecraft ended.

In the early 18^th century, piracy revived following the wreck of a Spanish treasure fleet off the Atlantic coast of Florida. Pirates preyed on the salvage operations and then organized themselves in the Bahamas. These are the notorious pirates like Blackbeard, who sailed in defiance of all authority and plundered the ships of every nation.

Piracy declined in response to changes in geopolitics, as seen with the buccaneers. Another major factor was changes in the support pirates received from communities ashore. Landlubbers supported piracy for many reasons, including the simple fact that they provided goods unavailable in the colonies by legitimate means. When pirates lost that connection, they lost the shelter they needed in between cruises.

Is there any one certain pirate most closely related to Florida?

I wouldn’t say there’s a particular Florida pirate. Sorry, Gasparilla fans: He’s a legend. But Florida’s Treasure Coast was a prime area for hunting ships. Because of the Caribbean’s geography and the way the winds and currents worked, the best way back to Europe from the Caribbean was sailing north through the Florida Straits between Florida and the Bahamas. It was easy to sit at the top of the strait and wait for a ship to come in sight.

Would pirates ever have come ashore?

Yes, their ships needed constant maintenance, just like every other kind of ship (ask a boat owner!). Pirates also depended on seaside communities to buy their stolen goods, and once they had money to spend, pirates partied like rock stars drinking, gambling, carousing until the money was gone. Generally, there’s no reason pirates would have gone too far inland, since they were mostly seafarers and most of the European populations in the colonial period were on the coast anyway.

Were there some gentleman pirates as we sometimes see portrayed in movies?

Stede Bonnet was an example of a gentleman who turned pirate. He was a planter on Barbados in the 1710s. Apparently bored of life on land, he heard the call of the sea, and became a pirate captain, though without much sailing experience, he didn’t last long. Pirates did, however, sometimes dress in flamboyant style as depicted in the movies — but not because of their personal flair. Clothes wear out fast at sea and rich cloths such as silks and muslins were some of the valuable cargoes they plundered. Some sailors were surprisingly skilled with needle and thread — which is not that surprising at all when you consider the need for sail repairs and all the time they had aboard ship with nothing to do. Put all that together and you can get an impressive wardrobe.

Is there still pirate treasure to be found?

I doubt it. Actually, there probably never was much pirate treasure. Pirates usually spent their loot as fast as they could, and then went out and robbed some more. They weren’t big on saving.

One of the best known legends of pirate treasure is told about Captain William Kidd, who raided in the Indian Ocean in the 1690s and was later arrested in Boston, and sent to London for trial. He was executed in 1701. He took a while sailing from the Indian Ocean back to North America, with stops in Madagascar, the Caribbean, and New York, where his family lived.

Meanwhile, authorities knew about his plundering, and the size of his haul grew with each telling. When he showed up in New York with far less, people concluded he must have hidden it somewhere. Back in 2015, an underwater archaeologist claimed to have found Kidd’s treasure in Madagascar. The government had a big ceremony showing off a bunch of supposed silver bars. Turns out, they were just lead.

Did Knights and Pirates coexist?

Yes, there were pirates in the Middle Ages when chivalrous knights jousted, but they were not the same pirates of the Caribbean, which Europeans had not yet encountered. Piracy was common in the Mediterranean and was often practiced by the Muslim states of north Africa, the Barbary pirates that the United States would fight against early in its history.

Did pirates keep monkeys and parrots as pets?

I haven’t seen it directly in the sources, but it’s entirely plausible. Pirates operated in the Caribbean and off the coast of South America and Africa where monkeys and parrots are common. Plus, in Europe at the time there was a market for exotic animals, so monkeys and parrots were valuable to pirates like anything else they captured. True, pirates would have preferred gold, but life aboard ship was really boring and animals could provide entertainment. So, why not?