There are many things that people are looking for in a President, like leadership, policies, oratory skills, presence, but one of the most important factors that many people focus on is their education. Did Obama take his schooling seriously?
Barack Obama was an average student in high school, getting mostly B’s, and he spent a lot of time playing basketball. When Obama entered college, he became more driven and found his calling, which solidified with his time at Harvard Law School, where he was described as a gifted, natural leader.
Read on to find out more about Obama’s education, how he became a more serious student, and presidents who weren’t very concerned with their education.
From High School to Law School
Obama attended a private school called Punahou school in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he was born, from 5th grade up until the end of high school.
Obama was not at the top or bottom of his class in high school. As a B-average student, he maintained his grades while focusing more on getting better at basketball and hanging out with his friends.
Many teachers did touch upon his untapped potential in high school, but Obama not fully applying himself in early schooling did not stop him from becoming a successful politician and leader. Many successful people don’t do well in school to start with, especially as they find their calling and what they want to direct their energy towards later in life.
Obama’s grades were good enough for him to get into Occidental College in Los Angeles, where he attended his first two years of college before transferring to Columbia University. In college, he signed up for as many advanced political science and literature courses as he could take.
Jeff Yamaguchi, who went to Occidental College at the same time as Obama, described Obama as pensive, and in tune with other people. “He listens and he listens and he listens, rather than respond immediately to the first thing that’s out there. It’s like, ‘Let’s let it percolate for a little. Let’s let it simmer.’ He reads people really well… He adjusts to the situation.”
It was at Occidental College where Obama gave his first public political speech to a crowd, after getting involved in the activist work on campus and participating in a protest against the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. It was then he knew that he wanted to be a leader, but not specific to politics.
After getting his BA from Columbia and getting some real-world work experience as a city organizer, he went to Harvard Law School, graduating magna cum laude and becoming the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. This, accompanied by his subsequent careers as a lawyer, lecturer and professor, senator, and President of the United States, proves that while he may not have been serious about school at first, he quickly got into gear in his college years.
Watch the YouTube video below to see Obama give a speech about his early education to students in 2009.
The Non-Scholarly Presidents
There have been plenty of presidents over the years who were elected despite not having received top-notch schooling, so who are some of the less serious students to become president?
Abraham Lincoln, one of the most famous presidents of the United States, was one of the presidents with the least amount of formal education, which lasted only 18 months. Though Lincoln didn’t get many grades, he was primarily self-taught and an avid reader, and he was still an influential figure with quotes like this one.
Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States was even ranked last in his class at one point during his time at Bowdoin College.
Also among the presidents with lower grades are Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.
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