Canadian here, and I learned about MLK in middle school. Excerpts of his speech would have been played / read at school. I also recall studying the whole thing in my final year of high school. I had an English teacher who was not very good on the whole - instead of teaching us she would mainly overburden us with assignments to do (largely) independently and then present to the class. She did, however, provide with good reading materials and this, as I recall, was one of them.
On the side: I’m disappointed that Eisenhower’s Cross of Iron speech and his farewell address are almost unknown. ‘Military industrial complex’ is well a well known phrase from the latter but I don’t find many people know where it came from.
Though I don’t think I’d have been familiar with those as a kid growing up in the UK (except maybe the “day of infamy” line, the world wars were taught in detail, and that’s a pretty important part of WW2)
I had heard of the “I have a dream” speech
I’m familiar with I have a dream, and I think a lot (most?) people in The Netherlands are. I think I only learned about the Gettysburg address far later in life, and even now I’m not sure what it really is. I also wouldn’t be able to quote anything from it, except now because I just read it. The ‘four score and seven years ago’ I know becaus it is cited quite frequently in series/film but for a long time I didn’t know what it refered to. I only know who the orator was because it was mentioned up thread, and I believe myself reasonably aware of US history and not particularly deficient in that area. I checked here in house and others have the same position.
In sum, even though the Gettysburg address may be the most famous in US history for US citizens, that doesn’t mean that it is the best known speech in US history for non-US people (without specialised historical knowledge). IMHO I have a dream tops that by far among the general non-US public (if my sample and general impression from one country is representative), the mere words have a life of their own (even if they were already used before, they now are inextricably linked to that speech).
I know that the “I have a dream” speech is MLK’s most famous speech, and without a doubt the most significant. Personally though, I think his “I have been to the Mountaintop” is an equally moving speech. I think it belongs in any top 5 list.
Before reading this thread, if I had been asked what is the most famous speech, I would really have had no idea. What first comes to mind is a repeated skit on Letterman where they would play several clips of past presidential speeches and then something stupid Bush 43 said. I think the old clips were from the “the only thing we have to fear”, “ask not what this country can do for you”, and “tear down this wall” speeches, all of which seem like candidates. I also would likely have considered Kennedy’s “man on the moon” speech. I don’t know if Gettysburg or “I have a dream” would have come up.
As for speeches I was taught about in school, I’m 99 percent sure Gettysberg was one of them and 99 percent sure “I have a dream” was not.
How old are you? “I have a dream” was not taught when I was in school. MLK was rather controversial at the time. My 6th grade teacher got in some trouble for expressing that he though MLK was a ‘bum’. I don’t recall exactly why, riling up people or something like that. He seemed somewhat repentant when King was assassinated not long after that.
Not @Darren_Garrison, but I graduated high school in '87 in rural Indiana and I can say with reasonable certainty that we were taught little to nothing about “I have a dream…” but I still can bust out the Gettysburg Address from back in 5th grade when Mr. Roberson made us all memorize it.
I’m 51. The civil rights movement may or may not have been mentioned at all in any of my history classes, I don’t remember. I suspect there wasn’t really much of anything past WWII, though. Black History Month was after my time.
This is just mind-blowing to me. I graduated in '92, and my experience is almost the exact opposite. Despite taking and acting AP US history, I never encountered more than a summary of the Gettysburg Address. But I Have a Dream was everywhere every February, starting I think in second grade. Maybe it’s my school experience that’s outside the norm?
I think so. As I mentioned, Black History Month just wasn’t a thing where/when I went to school in South Carolina (graduating from high school in 1991, in an area that probably exceeded 90% white). I see that Black History Month has been around since the 1970s, but I never even heard of it until well after I finished college. And as I mentioned, my history classes likely never touched on much that happened past the end of WWII. Possibly covered the Korean war, almost definitely not Vietnam. And almost definitely nothing to do with cultural movements in the 1960s. If there was anything, it wasn’t impactful enough to leave any trace of a memory with me.
I was thinking the dividing line would be somewhere around age 50. I guess a little older than that though.
I’m well over 50. We learned about the MLK speech in school. (Maryland, 1970s) I actually remember them wheeling in the old TV set into our 8th Grade classroom to watch a recording of it. We didn’t get too much “recent” US history, but we did get a little.
There may also be a geographic divide. I went to school in North Carolina, but in the “pat of butter in a sea of grits,” in Jesse Helm’s “We don’t need a North Carolina Zoo, we can just put a fence around” Chapel Hill. Maybe learning IHAD was more common in non-Southern schools?
I don’t remember what we were taught when I was a kid. MLK was certainly talked about. My school was named after him. I do remember we were all impressed that one of our teachers was in DC and heard the speech live.
I don’t remember what we were taught about the GA except that I reached adulthood knowing about it.
At this point in history I thing IHaD is much more famous. I have seen scholars argue that the Gettysburg Address is the best speech in English ever and I probably have to agree. Every word is inportant and perfectly placed. The timing and pacing are perfect. It’s an expertly composed piece of music in spoken word form.
It’s fame and impact at the time it was delivered was helped by the fact that oration was supposed to be long and flowery. Edward Everett spoke before Lincoln and his speech lasted two hours. Lincoln spoke for 272 words in 2 minutes and blew everyone away.
I asked my kids:
12 yo couldn’t think of any famous American speech then came out with 1) Make America Great Again and 2) " Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors." Thank you Lin-Manuel Miranda.
She disavowed any knowledge of IHAD.
15 yo answered straight away with, in reverse order,
Ask not what your country…
I have a dream
Gettysburg blasted Address
But the Scottish history curriculum does have a big slavery module so it’s not just pop culture.
I just reread the Gettysburg address, and it gave me goose bumps. It’s a really good speech.
My high school history books were old, and basically ended at the civil war. Maybe a little bit on reconstruction, but certainly nothing modern, like World War II. (Which took place in the childhood of my parents.) I didn’t think i saw anything in school about WWI until i studied European history in college. So no, i didn’t learn about “i have a dream” in public school. I do remember when he was assassinated, but i was pretty young, and it was just one of several shocking assassinations in my youth.
That being said, i don’t think an educated American can avoid knowing about the IHAD speech, and of course I’ve heard it read several times. It is kinda the “theme song” for a national holiday, after all. And it’s an excellent and moving speech.
Yeah I remember the US civil rights movement (including MLK and the IHaD speech) being taught as an epilogue to the history of slavery and abolition in school history lessons in 1980s/90s England
I was not taught about the Gettysburg address IIRC. I think my dad told me about that, he was randomly a bit of a civil war buff (who’d spent time in the US with his dad as a teenager)
I was given a big Merriam-Webster dictionary as a First Communion present; in the back was the Gettysburg Address peppered with a whole bunch of English corrections! Da noive!
German born in 1968 here. I remember that in the early 80s, the sister of my best friend had a picture hanging on her wall of MLK with excerpts from the IHAD speech, I think it was a confirmation gift to her (the family is Lutheran), and that I didn’t have to ask her about it because I was already familiar with it. I don’t remember where I first heard of MLK and his famous speech, but I’m sure that it wasn’t from my regular history classes, as we almost exclusively were taught European history. British and American history got covered in English class though, so that’s probably where I first learned about it. As an avid reader of both books and magazines already in my childhood, my knowledge could have come also from reading, or maybe I saw a TV documentary.
As for the Gettysburg Address, I bet only 1 in 1000 Germans would have heard about it. Most would probably think it’s a street address in some town in an English speaking country. I also first heard of it here at the Dope some years ago.
ETA: and guess which ABBA song I have as an earworm since opening this thread…