LAS VEGAS, Nevada. It wasn’t so much the failure of his third-graders to answer basic questions, says Bob Krumholz, an instructor at Jerry Tarkanian Elementary School. “Kids have a lot of holes in their knowledge these days because they’re always glued to their phones,” he says ruefully. “It was more the subject matter. It was a core competency these kids need to survive in a highly-competitive global economy.”
But Krumholz isn’t talking about reading, writing or arithmetic. “Those things you can find on the internet,” he says dismissively, drawing glares from fellow teachers, which he returns with an air of menace. “I’m talking about knowledge of Elvis Aaron Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, the greatest entertainer who ever lived.”
His students’ deficiency turned up on a Friday afternoon “open book” test when he told his class he was going to “go easy” on them. What he thought would be a “gut” exam turned into a nightmare that threatened the school’s accreditation when 64% of his students could not identify Presley’s first number one hit (“Heartbreak Hotel”), the years he served in the U.S. Army (1958-60), or his first film (“Love Me Tender”). “I didn’t want parents coming up to me at the shopping mall on weekends asking ‘What the hell are you teaching my children in that school we financed with a multi-million dollar bond issue?” he adds with a disgust.
So Krumholz, who holds a master’s degree in elementary education from Caesar’s Palace State University, sat down over a weekend with his wife Viola and a neighbor, Margene Florvis, and began to put together a core curriculum based on Elvis’s life, influence on American music, sociological background, and physical measurements. “When they get through with this . . . or when we get through with them,” says Florvis, there won’t be any kids from India or Japan who can beat ’em at an Elvis Bee.”
Critics of the so-called “Elvis Education” movement say it takes time and focus away from classes that offer a greater return on investment for teachers and money for school districts. “How many teaching positions are there going to be for Elvis impersonators?” asks Amanda Bucholz-Finley, a freshman Language Arts teacher whose course materials do not include any Elvis classics, from his cover of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” to the somewhat obscure “(Marie’s the Name) His Latest Flame.” “Not many I’ll bet, and I don’t need the competition teaching ‘Silas Marner’ and ‘Great Expectations,’ thank you.”
Instruction will begin this summer in three target locations identified with Presley: Tupelo, Mississippi, his birthplace; Memphis, Tennessee, where he made his first recordings, and here in Las Vegas, where he resurrected his career and reinvented himself as a performer. “They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” says incoming Chamber of Commerce President Wiley Tucker. “But we want to give kids the same educational enrichment that the Pipefitters Union and the National Association of Proctologists get during their conventions.”