Sacramento Tutors

About Sacramento

Sacramento is the capital city of the most populous state in the United States: California. Its capitol building is an example of neoclassical architecture, with columns, a cupola, and balanced symmetry. Alongside the order of the capitol building, though, is the Great Seal of the state. The Great Seal has undergone several iterations since California first joined the Union, but its current imagery is a testament to all things associated with California: innovation, industry, hard work, and prosperity.

The Great Seal features several images that speak to the history of the state. The first of these images, most prominently displayed, is the Greek goddess Athena. Athena, born a full-grown adult form the mind of her father, Zeus, was the goddess of wisdom. California, like Athena, never experienced an “infancy,” since it was never an official territory before it became a state. Athena’s association with wisdom is also pertinent, since much technological innovation that comes out of the United States come from California’s Silicon Valley.

At Athena’s feet is a black bear eating grapes from a vine, a symbol of California’s agricultural contributions to the world. Napa Valley and the wine industry is a thriving, famous draw for people from all over the world. If the Great Seal were bigger, perhaps it could also include a few of the countless varieties of fruits and vegetables grown and exported from the state. The black bear is the state animal, native to California forests.

In the background of the Great Seal is a miner digging through the earth. This, of course, is a reference to the miners of the mid-nineteenth century that flocked to California when gold was discovered in Sutter’s Mill in 1849. The industrious and ambitious miners set a precedent for countless other entrepreneurs seeking success in the Golden State.

The coastline behind Athena and the miner represents the early discovery of the state, first found by Spanish missionaries and conquistadors (in addition to the native populations that already inhabited the state before the Europeans arrived). California offered natural resources, a temperate climate similar to the Mediterranean, and a variety of opportunities for Spanish expansion. The mountains surrounding the bay are a reference to the Sierra Nevadas that occupy the north eastern borders of the state.

Sacramento students, living in the political center of the state, should take note of the Great Seal and work with Grade Potential tutors to develop the wisdom of Athena, an appetite for learning, the industry and work ethic of the miner, and the hope for a bright future of prosperity and discovery of the Spanish explorers. Sacramento tutors can also be inspired by the Great Seal to shape the character and intellectual growth of their clients as symbolized so aptly in California’s rich history as expressed on its state seal.