In other words, which US President would say “Tally-ho, it’s Tea Time?”

Most scholars say the answer is the first three US Presidents: George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. These three all likely had British accents.

Also, add to the list Ben Franklin — yes, he likely had a British accent.

In fact, most of the founding fathers probably had British accents because they were British subjects only a few generations removed from living in England.

The British accent extended to much of the population of the United States at that time.

The creative process to discover this interesting fact is called “Time Travel.”

You can learn other creative tricks by watching the TEDxSedona titled, “Creativity is the #1 Skill to Survive in the 21st Century.”

Now, imagine yourself back in 1776 with the Founding Fathers, and use your imagination to hear, see, feel and even smell your way into their lives.  And, the founding fathers did not smell very nice since bathing was not a daily ritual in that time period.

In fact, the White House’s first flush toilet was installed in 1853 during the presidency of Millard Fillmore which was 50 years after George Washington was President.

Now imagine our country as it was when George Washington was President and our population was only 4 million.  That number was close to the today’s population of Los Angeles.

Why bother to “Time Travel” you ask, and the answer is to search for ideas.  You go back in time to find solutions to the problems that you have today.  Picasso said, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

According to Picasso, the creative process is not about pulling ideas out of thin air, instead it is about finding ideas from the past, and from other people, places, things, nature, companies, countries, cultures, and different disciplines.

To borrow other ideas like Picasso, you have to see them, and this means increasing your powers of observation.  Go to Starbucks to Learn the Creative Power of Observation.

I can show your teachers how to make classes fun like this at Professional Development for Teachers.

As an example, our Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of government by the people, for the people.  They went back 2,500 years and borrowed that idea from the Greeks in Athens.

United States Constitution

They did add to that idea by creating three branches of government, but they also copied over two BIG mistakes (by the Greeks) which were excluding women from voting and allowing slavery.

BTW: Our Founding Fathers made one change in that the voting Greeks each had one vote for whatever law or issue (usually going to war) was on the ballot, and in America we cast our vote for the politicians (President, Senator or U. S. Representative) who will vote for us.