As parents, no doubt this has happened to each of us. One of your children approaches and asks, “Can I have some money?” reaching into our wallets we retrieve a single one dollar bill and hand it to them. They will often surprise you and say “thank you” but most often their reply will be “I only get a dollar?” It is just a dollar but they hold in their hands something that is not only educational but contains a wealth of history. Reach into you wallet and take a look at the dollar, then if you are fortunate to have bills of other denominations, look at them and you will notice a vast difference in their appearance compared to the dollar bill. All those bills in denominations above the one dollar bill have been changed in recent years to reduce counterfeiting and for security reasons.
The appearance of the dollar bill has not changed since it came off the presses in 1957, hopefully it will remain that way to remind us all of our “roots”. To the right of the picture of our first President, you will notice the United States Treasury Seal. On top of the seal, you will see a set of scales, I always assumed this was represented “justice”; however, it represents a “balanced budget. In the center, a carpenter’s square, a tool used for an even cut in regards to taxes and on the bottom a key, representing the Key to the United States Treasury.
Continental Congress requested that Benjamin Franklin and a group of men come up with a Seal. It took them four years to accomplish this task and another two years to get it approved. Look at the left hand circle, you will see a Pyramid. The face is lighted but the western side is dark. The country was just beginning; we had not begun to explore the West. The Pyramid is uncapped, again signifying that we were not even close to being finished with our Democracy. Inside the capstone, you have the all-seeing eye, an ancient symbol for divinity. It was Franklin’s belief that one man could not do it alone, but a group of men, with the help of God, could do anything. “In God We Trust” is on this currency. The Latin above the pyramid, ANNUIT COEPTIS, means, “God has favored our undertaking”Now look at the right-hand circle. This symbol appears on every National Cemetery in the United States. Slightly modified, it is also the Seal of the President of the United
States. The Bald Eagle was selected as a symbol for victory for two reasons. First, he is not afraid of a storm because he is strong and he is smart enough to soar above it. Secondly, he wears no material crown; we had just broken from the King of England. The shield on the Eagle is unsupported signaling that our country can now stand on its own. At the top of that shield, there is a white bar signifying that Congress is a unifying factor.In the beak of the Eagle, you can read “E PLURIBUS UNUM” which means “one nation from many people”. Above the Eagle, there are thirteen stars, representing the thirteen original colonies. In his talons, the Eagle holds an olive branch and arrows. This country wants peace, but we will never be afraid to fight to preserve peace and freedom. The Eagle wants to face the olive branch, a sign of peace, but in time of war, his gaze turns toward the arrows. They say the number 13 is unlucky. However, on the dollar bill reference is made to the 13 Original Colonies; there were 13 signers of the Declaration of Independence; 13 Stripes on our flag; 13 Steps on the Pyramid; 13 Letters in the Latin above the Pyramid; 13 Letters in “E Pluribus Unum”; 13 Stars above the Eagle; 13 Bars on the Shield; 13 Leaves on the Olive Branch; 13 Fruits and if you look very close, 13 Arrows in the Eagles talons.
When I saw this, it reminded me of something that I heard in a political speech by Senator Obama. In his speech, he highlighted the need to improve our schools and the need to improve the curriculum. He reeled out numerous classes that need improvement, including human behavior and the arts, out of all the classes that he named, no mention was made of History, Geography, Government, or Economics. All of which were my favorites. Our children are not being taught history in our school system, what little is taught is basic and only that which has occurred in the past forty years. That was yesterday, that is not history.
