<\/p>\n
Teacher Samantha Dowis, rear left, looks on as tour guide Christina Gioia, right, takes her students through an exhibit at the Museum of the American Revolution on Feb. 26, 2026, in Philadelphia. (Greg Toppo\/The 74 Million via AP)<\/p>\n
Greg Toppo\/AP<\/p>\n
Tour guide Christina Gioia, center, talks to students about a replica of the Declaration of Independence at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia, Feb. 26, 2026. (Greg Toppo\/The 74 Million via AP)<\/p>\n
Greg Toppo\/AP<\/p>\n
Tour guide Christina Gioia, center back, shows students an exhibit in which Continental soldiers from different regions fight each other in Harvard Yard at the Museum of the American Revolution on Feb. 26, 2026, in Philadelphia. (Greg Toppo\/The 74 Million via AP)<\/p>\n
Greg Toppo\/AP<\/p>\n
Among longtime history teacher Karalee Wong Nakatsuka\u2019s most prized possessions are two nearly identical T-shirts with very different meanings.<\/p>\n
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One comes from Philadelphia\u2019s Museum of the American Revolution<\/a>, celebrating our Founding Fathers\u2019 signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and their fight for freedom from the British Crown.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The second is from Ford\u2019s Theater<\/a> in Washington, D.C., where an assassin killed President Abraham Lincoln 89 years after the Declaration\u2019s signing. The Civil War, fought to free the nation\u2019s nearly four million enslaved people, had effectively ended five days before the president was shot.<\/p>\n Both T-shirts bear the slogan: \u201cCreated Equal.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not lost on Nakatsuka, the child of Chinese immigrants, that the nation took its time bestowing the same universal gift from the Declaration \u2014 \u201cAll men are created equal\u201d \u2014 on African Americans.<\/p>\n And this isn\u2019t an abstract concept to her mostly Asian eighth-grade students at First Avenue Middle School in Arcadia, California, who are struggling to process news about birthright citizenship, ICE arrests<\/a> and deportations in their Los Angeles suburb.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the beginning,\u201d she said, \u201cwe talk about the Declaration.\u201d<\/p>\n As its 250th anniversary nears, teachers like Nakatsuka face the challenge of bringing the nation\u2019s founding documents and the Revolution alive while presenting an accurate account of what happened \u2014 and what it all means today.<\/p>\n Add to that the task of teaching in a politically divided nation that now holds a microscope to the founders, casting them as less-than-heroic slaveholders and capitalists even as advocates for patriotic education urge teachers to exalt them as God-like heroes.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n At East Kentwood High School in Western Michigan, history teacher Matthew Vriesman takes an approach similar to Nakatsuka\u2019s, challenging his students to look past their preconceptions of documents like the Declaration and ask: \u201cWho was it originally for? Who is it for now?\u201d<\/p>\n The 250th, he said, is a perfect time to get students to think deeply about the Declaration\u2019s vision of \u201call men created equal\u201d and ask: How\u2019s that experiment going?<\/p>\n \u201cIf you really think about it, high school history class is an incredible opportunity,\u201d Vriesman said. \u201cThis is the last time where people in this country are forced to sit and think and write about the founding values. This is the last time.\u201d<\/p>\n Civics teachers \u2018are not OK\u2019<\/p>\n Americans in 2026 \u2014 and this generation especially \u2014 could probably use a lesson in those values.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Just 47% of adults in a recent survey could correctly identify<\/a> why the original 13 Colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776. And in a recent survey<\/a> of Gen Z, the youngest of whom are now in high school, researchers at Tufts University found that they hold troubling attitudes toward democracy: Nearly one in three displayed \u201cdismissive detachment,\u201d with low confidence in our governing system and higher than average support for authoritarianism. Nearly two-thirds displayed a \u201cpassive appreciation\u201d for democracy, saying they trusted the government but were complacent about politics.<\/p>\n As the Declaration\u2019s 250th anniversary looms, teachers say they\u2019re working in a climate of increased scrutiny and uncertainty. In a recent survey<\/a>, more than half said teaching basic civics concepts now feels \u201cdifficult,\u201d with nearly six in 10 worrying about potential backlash for teaching something the \u201cwrong way.\u201d About 20% said they\u2019ve experienced actual backlash for lessons they\u2019ve taught. More than one in three said they\u2019ve changed or removed lessons they typically teach because of the climate in their school or community.<\/p>\n \u201cCivics teachers are not OK, and that stinks, no matter what year it is,\u201d said Emma Humphries, chief education officer of the nonprofit group iCivics, which produced the survey. \u201cBut it\u2019s really awful when we should be in a more celebratory mood.\u201d<\/p>\n The group designs curricula and games about civic education and history. In preparation for the anniversary, iCivics created a campaign called We Can Teach Hard Things<\/a>, which features the tagline, \u201cWe don\u2019t stop teaching algebra when working with polynomials gets hard. Nor should we stop teaching civics when explaining the rule of law gets hard.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Despite the pressures, teachers say they\u2019re diving in, with about eight in 10 saying the Revolutionary period and the founding documents are \u201chigh priorities\u201d for their classrooms. The founders, the Declaration and the American Revolution are by far teachers\u2019 favorite historical topics, according to a 2024 survey by the American Historical Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n No other topic even comes close.<\/p>\n Teaching \u2018historical empathy\u2019<\/p>\n As her fifth-graders toured the hushed galleries of the Revolution Museum in Philadelphia one recent morning, teacher Samantha Dowis watched as they thrilled to the muskets, the outfits and to Gen. George Washington\u2019s actual tent, even if they were light on how it all fit together.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Their tour guide led them from room to room, and the students could easily tell her who Washington was and that he\u2019d crossed the Delaware River to their native New Jersey. But at the Battle of Trenton exhibit, when asked who the Hessians<\/a> were, not a single hand went up. (For the record: They were German mercenaries<\/a> hired by the British to fight the Colonists.)<\/p>\n Dowis said she wasn\u2019t worried. They\u2019d barely begun learning about the Revolution, and were only now getting a sense that 2026 is somehow a significant anniversary.<\/p>\n For younger students, she and others said, the challenge in teaching history turns on getting and keeping their attention and emphasizing compelling narratives built around political ideals \u2014 while often battling against misinformation or just random bits they encounter online.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like we teach them more now than when we were younger,\u201d Dowis said. \u201cThey learn more content now than I remember from when I was in school.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n From an early age, kids understand concepts like voting rights, she said. So when the lessons turn to the colonies, realizing \u201cthey didn\u2019t have a say in government\u201d and rebelled, that resonates.<\/p>\n Dowis, who grew up nearby in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Bridesburg, said her students occasionally want to talk about fraught issues of race and slavery. She avoids politics if she can, but if students ask questions about how different races or groups of people experienced history, \u201cwe definitely talk about it. We make sure to hear everybody\u2019s perspective, and not just one voice,\u201d she said. By the time they leave fifth grade in Maple Shade, New Jersey, they\u2019ve learned about enslavement not just in the American colonies, but among the Mayan, Incan and Aztec cultures, among others.<\/p>\n While many adults learned history with a heavy emphasis on names, dates and significant battles, educators now often say they take a more story-centric approach that invites students to experience what\u2019s often called \u201chistorical empathy,\u201d putting people into the shoes of those who lived history.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more we can put it in terms of everyday people, and help people relate to those individuals, we find, the more successful we can be,\u201d said Michael Hensinger, who oversees K-12 education for the museum. \u201cIt can be really hard to relate to a general, a king, queen, somebody like that, which is often the lens through which a lot of history was taught when I was growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n So the museum frontloads stories of everyday people, soldiers and citizens alike, who found themselves caught up in war, such as Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut teenager who joined the state militia in 1776 and defended New York City before re-enlisting for the war\u2019s duration.<\/p>\n The museum also highlights the story of London Pleasants, an enslaved 15-year-old in Virginia who in 1781 joined Loyalist forces under the command of Benedict Arnold. Two years earlier, the Crown had offered protection to slaves who fled to the British lines.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a lot of young people aren\u2019t necessarily hungry for Revolutionary War history, but they are really fascinated by stories,\u201d said Tyler Putnam, the museum\u2019s senior manager for gallery interpretation.<\/p>\n \u201cKids are curious,\u201d said Lauren Tarshis, author of the young adult novel I Survived The American Revolution, 1776. \u201cRight now, they\u2019re going on YouTube and watching real stories about these things,\u201d not all of them historically accurate.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Tarshis\u2019 deeply researched I Survived<\/a> series has grown to 25 books since 2017. Instead of shying away from difficult topics in history, she said, young people invite them in if there\u2019s hope at the end.<\/p>\n The Digital History Group\u2019s Reading Like a Historian<\/a> program leverages their curiosity with primary sources \u2014 maps, letters, paintings, diary entries \u2014 to help students answer key questions such as: Who actually shot first<\/a> at the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775?<\/p>\n Students start with a painting commissioned 200 years later by the Lexington Historical Society that offers an heroic image of colonists fighting back against the British. Then they examine a 1775 engraving by one of the American fighters showing colonists fleeing the scene. After that they read an account from a British officer who admits his men were firing without orders but who believes the colonists shot first. Finally they read an account from colonists who, unsurprisingly, blame the British. Students must wrestle with competing accounts to try to make sense of it all.<\/p>\n \u201cHistory has never been uncontested,\u201d said Joel Breakstone, a former Stanford History Education Group director who co-founded the group.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u2018A fundamentally good country\u2019<\/p>\n In 2026, teachers like Vriesman, whose district sits south of Grand Rapids, Michigan , must also help students understand U.S. history through the lens of new federal immigration policies that undermine their sense of \u201ccreated equal.\u201d The area has seen several immigration raids<\/a> and arrests, prompting students recently to walk out of school in protest<\/a>.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, he said, each year he is impressed with his students\u2019 willingness to embrace the Declaration\u2019s ideals before he even tackles the document itself. His school district is among the most diverse in Michigan, with students from around the globe, bringing different religions, worldviews and life stories to class. But when pressed to share their beliefs, he said, virtually all hold \u201cbasic Enlightenment values.\u201d<\/p>\n All of his students, \u201cfrom Somalia to farm country,\u201d say they agree that people should be able to raise their families how they\u2019d like and not be afraid to live in a society based on who they are or where they hail from.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness \u2014 \u201cThey literally create this before they even know what the Declaration of Independence really is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n That\u2019s despite the fact that many students when they\u2019re younger learn something more akin to a \u201cfounding myth\u201d than actual U.S. history, said one of his students, 18-year-old Christina Le.<\/p>\n \u201cThe founders are really seen as mythological figures in a sense, and they\u2019re portrayed as more heroic,\u201d she said. \u201cBut when you start studying them more, you see them more as flawed human beings who eventually brought that into the Constitutional Convention, even though they were trying to create these ideals.\u201d<\/p>\n Le, whose parents emigrated from Vietnam around 1999, said it\u2019s important to understand the founders as \u201cmen who were created through the context of the Revolutionary War.\u201d They fought the war based on ideals of liberty, she said, but refused to acknowledge the broader issue of whose liberty they were fighting for. \u201cAnd we\u2019re kind of still seeing the effects today.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Her classmate, 17-year-old Hawathiya Mulual, said she began thinking deeply about liberty and equal rights in middle school. She was just 11 in 2020, when police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, triggering a racial reckoning nationwide around the use of police force on people of color.<\/p>\n The child of Sudanese and Ethiopian refugees, Mulual said her interest in U.S. history and government took root \u201cwhen you saw justice was so hard to achieve \u2014 why was it so hard to condemn those police officers involved?\u201d<\/p>\n The 250th anniversary takes place at a time when history itself is under extreme political pressure. President Donald Trump last year signed an executive order pushing schools to promote \u201cpatriotic education,\u201d and the U.S. Department of Education recently announced grants<\/a> designed to promote \u201cinformed patriotism and love of country.\u201d<\/p>\n Museums have protested as the administration pushes to rewrite historical displays to downplay the role of slavery. In Philadelphia, the National Park Service in January removed a set of large explanatory panels detailing the U.S. slave trade at the President\u2019s House Site<\/a>, where both George Washington and John Adams once lived. The city sued, and a federal judge, likening the administration to the propaganda-spewing Ministry of Truth in George Orwell\u2019s 1984, ordered the display to be reinstated<\/a> while litigation over the move continues.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n While 2026 may seem for many a far cry from the U.S. bicentennial celebration in 1976, when the nation came together for fireworks, concerts and parades of tall ships<\/a>, the Revolution Museum\u2019s Putnam, said not so fast: Politics divided those celebrations too. The festivities of 1976, he said, fell on the heels of massive American traumas, such as the 1960s fight for civil rights, the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the Watergate scandal, which forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.<\/p>\n What\u2019s perhaps different, he said, is that this time around, a generation of historic scholarship has uncovered narratives of Native American, Black and women\u2019s voices as part of the nation\u2019s founding. \u201cEven though those people were advocating for inclusion in 1976, there wasn\u2019t the sort of social or scholarly body of material to say, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re interested in Black soldiers? Here\u2019s a book that will help you tell a Revolutionary story.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n All the same, Trump has taken the opportunity to assert that U.S. students are \u201ctaught in school to hate their own country<\/a>, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but villains,\u201d placing teachers in a political bind that\u2019s mostly undeserved, said Brian Kisida, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and codirector of its Arts, Humanities, & Civic Engagement Lab<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kisida recalled giving a recent keynote address to the Missouri Council for Social Studies and wandering around the conference, listening in on teachers\u2019 talks. \u201cI thought there would be a little bit more left-wing-coded stuff\u201d on offer, he recalled. \u201cI didn\u2019t see any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Actually, he said, he was impressed with many of the presentations. \u201cI would categorize most of the stuff as actually really damned good,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kisida\u2019s recent research suggests that how U.S. history is taught these days can\u2019t easily be reduced to a definitive narrative. On the one hand, more than one in three<\/a> high schoolers say their teachers \u201coften\u201d or \u201calmost daily\u201d argue that America is a fundamentally racist nation. But more than half say their teachers regularly discuss the progress made toward racial equality since the 1970s.<\/p>\n He has also found<\/a> that teachers, as a group, are actually more pro-America than the general public, with 62% saying the U.S. is \u201ca fundamentally good country.\u201d Just 55% of adults overall said the same. And 82% of teachers say it\u2019s important for kids to learn about the U.S. Constitution and its core values, versus 75% of adults more broadly.<\/p>\n But Kisida, who studies civics education, said familiarity with the Constitution is not enough. Holding up a pocket-sized Constitution, he said, \u201cThe people that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, lots of them had these in their pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n To go deeper, he said, we\u2019ve got to understand why it\u2019s important to enshrine ideas such as the separation of powers<\/a>. \u201cWe have to do a better job of explaining why these principles embedded in the Constitution and other American values are actually essential to democratic life and sustaining the American experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018The whole story of our founding\u2019<\/p>\n Vriesman, the Michigan history teacher, said that while teachers in most places worry about the school board looking over their shoulder, on a day-to-day basis they\u2019re more worried about keeping students engaged. And most students, he said, can easily see through patriotic narratives. \u201cIf we describe a world to them that doesn\u2019t actually resonate with their reality \u2014 some of the overly patriotic, \u2018You have to know about these 10 guys who solved all the world\u2019s problems\u2019 \u2014 that\u2019s not a compelling argument.\u201d<\/p>\n His student Le laughed when asked about \u201cpatriotic history\u201d. \u201cI don\u2019t really know how else to put it, but I think it\u2019s stupid,\u201d she said. Part of the fun of studying history is studying \u201cstruggle and resistance\u201d \u2014 and the art, music and culture that they produce.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t really love America and American ideals if you decide to ignore everything that America has done to rectify these issues that have been there since the beginning,\u201d Le said. \u201cI think that\u2019s really the beauty of history. How boring would it be to only see one perspective, only one idea, that America has always been like this?\u201d<\/p>\n By now, most students are well aware of the founders\u2019 inconsistencies, said Will Colglazier, a history teacher at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California. They know that many were slaveholders who espoused equality but had a narrow conception of who it was for.<\/p>\n To deepen their understanding, he asks his students to double down on the details and read \u201ca ton of documents\u201d that, for instance, juxtapose Thomas Jefferson\u2019s views on liberty with his views on slavery and race. They read a letter in which he writes of whipping<\/a> one of his slaves.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t unsee that,\u201d Colglazier said. \u201cYou can\u2019t unknow that once you read it. And I think that is something that\u2019s new to them. It becomes more real and interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n All the same, those details shouldn\u2019t become a roadblock to learning about the founders, said Ian Rowe, CEO and co-founder of Vertex Partnership Academies<\/a>, a charter school in New York\u2019s South Bronx neighborhood.<\/p>\n In response to what he and others saw as incomplete portrayals<\/a> of U.S. history, he helped create 1776 Unites<\/a>, which highlights stories of Black achievement from throughout our history. Rowe is also a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute<\/a>, but the curriculum is not associated with the overtly conservative 1776 curriculum<\/a> developed by Hillsdale College.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to tell the whole story of our founding,\u201d Rowe said, \u201cwarts and all. And you have to show how documents like The Declaration, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, all of it, have enabled the country to move in a direction that is unparalleled in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n At Vertex, students each morning stand and recite the preamble to the Constitution: \u201cWe the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Those 52 words are key to the school\u2019s mission of self-improvement, said Rowe. They point to a key truth: \u201cWe are active participants in the development of our society. We are active participants in securing the blessings of liberty. It\u2019s not left to someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n