American teachers are concerned, we have discovered this week, that George Washington is less well known among the young than a series of cartoon characters. Steven Spielberg may be enlisted — Saving General Washington, perhaps? — to remind teenagers that this was not the founding father who flew kites (Benjamin Franklin), who was shot dead by the Vice-President in a duel (Alexander Hamilton) or who had sex with his slaves (Thomas Jefferson), but the one who engaged in the altogether more mundane activity of establishing the nation.