our substantive program and that is going to be a program today on sparking civic engagement through history education and last night at the conclusion of the program. i said that education is certainly a common thread that we all share and is critical to the future of our country and we are honored that we have as the moderator of this group dr. kathy gorn who you know is the extraordinary leader of national history day and she is been on our board for many many years former member of our board of directors of the white house historical association joining her on stage or dr. david bob president of the bill of rights institute, tim bailey director of curriculum development and instructional of the design for the guilder airman institute of american history and wendy, may dryer board chair of eye civics, please join me in welcoming our first panel of the 2022 presidential sites summit. good morning, everyone. i'm kathy goren executive director of national history day. and it's a privilege to to be the moderator of this this panel the session this morning is stuart noted education is absolutely critical and given the times that we're living in history education is especially important for those of you who are not familiar with national history day here. is it quick nutshell version of it. we sponsor a student program for six through 12th graders all across this country and also internationally in fact in which we ask kids to choose topics in history any topic they like and then go out and conduct extensive research into archives and libraries and museums, and i know that many of you have been contacted by our students year after year looking for primary resources to go along with their studies of the secondary material and so it's a real rigorous. very active study of the past. it's not your memorized names and dates kind of program the students after they've done their research. they then present their findings in creative formats they also have to relate their topic to an annual theme and i think we were clairvoyant when we set our themes up we set them years in advance. and so the first year of the pandemic the theme was breaking barriers in history, and this year's theme is debate and diplomacy in history. so i you know timing is everything i guess. so once once they do all that, they then present their findings at different competitions winners moving up the levels until our national event every year which sadly for the last three year has three years has been virtual, but we're going to be back on site next year by, you know, come hell or high water. pardon my language. thank you. we also do. our teacher training professional development opportunities to help social studies teachers become better history teachers and so we do instructional materials and summer institutes and those kinds of things which is very critical because many of the social studies teachers many don't do not major or minor in history in college, but they're certified to teach it. so we have to help them with training and resources. so that is history day in a nutshell. the the title of our session this morning is sparking civic engagement through history education. and again, it's very timely given the climate that we've been living in when you know a time when civic education civic engagement civic discourse in particular is divided and very polarized and it's a time when interpretations of history and approaches to history education. are being scrutinized i think that i would guess that most of us here. hopefully all of us here would agree that history education is absolutely critical to building good citizenship to for civic engagement and the best way to do that is through an active. body of the past with students and many studies over the decades have noted that students who study history in an active rigorous way. they're more likely to volunteer. they're more likely to engage in their communities. they're more likely to vote and vote thoughtfully. and build history education builds empathy so it's it's again very critical but history and social studies teachers are dealing with internal and external influences on classroom practice and and curricula. so the big question is what can we do? how can we help our teachers improve the way they teach and engage their students in a really rigorous and meaningful study of the past. so that's what we're going to talk about this morning a little bit and i'm going to turn to my colleagues to to hear their advice. so i'm going to start with wendy. one day may dryer again is the board chair of icivics. so wendy. what does civic engagement mean and you know, so what does that look like? hello. my name is she said wendy may dryer and i'm a board chair. a full disclosure. i'm actually a recovering attorney who retired recently to go work full-time for i civics because i felt like it was such an important mission and giving what's happening in our country and society today. civic engagements is a big talk in just to give you a brief background. i think you wanted us to do this on our organizations. we i civics is the largest civic education resource provider in the country. we were started by justice sandra day o'connor when she retired from the bench and even though that seems to most of us like quite a long time ago, she was already sensing. what was to come it was first delta the judiciary and it's certainly trickled down to all of the branches of government in terms of the lack of knowledge as well as the distrust of our key institutions. and she wanted to do something about it. and so she began researching and ultimately and ironically a retired supreme court justice. she would never thought invented video games for teaching civic education. not personally herself obviously, but she retained some of the best in the country so that we have you know, we we have some of the highest rated i think one year. we ranked third after world of war video games. i mean, which is pretty impressive for an educational, you know video game site. we do video games, but then lesson plans and professional development back those up for teachers and we provide them as free resources to teachers because we all know they do not have especially social studies does not have the budget to be able to afford quality resources. and so that's what we do at the heart of our organization. we are actually now leader also in a i think probably the largest. partisan coalition that works in this arena nationally to help advocate for change across the country as well as civic programs being allowed to stay in school and not just allowed to stay which is sad to say but also prioritized so that's a very very brief nutshell what we do. specific engagement is at the heart of our mission. our mission is to create in the next generation responsible and formed engaged citizenry and i would say to to fully define civic engagement. you have to know it's not about just the part of that. that word it's not about just going out and getting involved because there's precursors to that and that's fundamental to our mission. you must have and our students must have knowledge. they must have skills. they must have the right attitudes before they can become responsible informed and engaged citizens. otherwise, they're just being told what to go protest for they're ponds and somebody else's game. they don't really know what they're doing. they don't know how to take part in their government and that's been the biggest problem we have found in schools. is that so many of the states quit having any requirement for government civics we call different things in different states but to teach our students the foundations of our government much less what to do with that and how to apply it in their daily lives. so we start by teaching history. you must know the facts. you must know factually where country has come from where it's headed what the institutions are and the importance of engaging in those and that leads into the the next key factor, which is attitudes you we start k through 12. it's a very early age you have to start creating convincing students that they need to care about our government our system of government our way of life in america, you know, probably a lot of you have seen them. but yes some of the more recent statistics are well scary in terms of where millennials in the generations after that are with respect to our foundations of government in america. i think the latest when i saw was 44% of millennials think the constitution is irrelevant. it's almost half of millennials think a constitution is irrelevant. let that soak in for a second. i think 35% had no faith in our american democracy. so you've got to start with the attitudes. we've got a whole generation. that just doesn't see any reason to support the american government. they don't believe in the experiment of american democracy. and so we have to begin by creating those appropriate attitudes if we want them to be engaged citizens, and then the last piece of that is this the skills piece that you've got to teach them how you've got to teach them the art of the civil discourse. not just civics discourse, but civil discourse. you've got to teach them primary and probably document analysis. you got to teach them, you know media literacy. you got to teach them advocacy. all of these skills are necessary so that then in the final stage they can be taught. okay, what do i do with all of this? i've got the knowledge. i've got the skills. i've got the appropriate attitudes how to i get involved in my local. community it's not just government local community state government federal government. how do i participate as a citizen and citizens of responsibility to do that? here here. no small task. no, no small tasks, especially given the fact that we have struggled for decades to keep history or put history back into its rightful place in the curriculum stem education while important as kicked history to the back burner and so we've been struggling with that alone for decades and now we're dealing with you know the the attack on historical truth and and history education what teachers can and cannot teach and so on so it's sort of a double whammy. in terms of the challenge that we have to teach history and teach more history and effort to encourage civic engagement we start i mean honestly as an aside when we when we organization by civic started the biggest challenge was just getting resources to what many people refer to as the black sheep of the education world, you know still was getting all the resources social studies got none and and they were just begging for resources. now what we're taking on what all of our organizations are taking on is movements to just not even teach history and civics in school at all. it's a serious serious problem and hopefully together we can work toward finding solutions to attack this this problem. so i'm going to turn to david david bob is president of the bill of rights institute. and why don't you tell us a little bit about what the institute is doing and and your thoughts on history and civic engagement. well, thank you for the opportunity to join you at the presidential site summit. i'm grateful for for the work that you all do and look forward to talking about ways. that civics can be even a greater part of the outreach work that you do in your communities across this country. if history teaches us about the past. i think civics is a way to chart our future. one of the big challenges that we have in reaching young people. is that when they're thinking about history or they're thinking about civics. what often comes to mind is? simply hashtag boring. they don't see it as something that they should care about. so the question of why matters most and i think we have to become better as a people. supporting a clear well-defined answer to why study history why these civically engaged? you know fast forward for a moment five years in time. think of what we are as a people, july 4th 2026 on that day the united states of america will turn to 250 years old. what will we do looking forward? how do we understand our past we'll have an occasion in this conference to reflect on that more but i think a lot about that when i think of what does that mean to a 16 year old because while we hear and many who are watching on c-span might be constitution nerds or history buffs. a 16 year old doesn't wake up with constitution day circled on his or her calendar what we have to do i think is is show them that there is a relevance and that's one of the things that i really am concerned about what you mentioned kathy that that chilling effect that can come to play. when do you also talked about this? it is vital i believe. that we as a nation support social studies educators in the immensely difficult work that they're doing and it was for that reason that my organization the bill of rights institute was started just over two decades ago. it was started by an educator. who had a vision that that teachers wanted resources that very often weren't the official thing that they were handed by their districts or their states that official textbook. they wanted professional learning that brought them into community and fellowship with with one another as educators who knew the very challenges that they face. let me give you one piece of data that was done through a nationwide survey just before the pandemic in october of 2019. the organization newsela asked administrators all across the country. how much do you think that? teachers in social studies and middle school and high school use the officially approved textbook that's been paid for by the taxpayer. the administrators said one out of two days. then in that same national survey, the teachers were asked how much you use it and they said one out of five days. the big gap there shows that our teachers across this country are entrepreneurial their curators of content. they pull together current events. they pull together things that are that are drawn online. so as to be able to answer those really difficult questions of why so as to be able to talk about the things that sometimes right now we think should be verboten. the bill of rights institute takes us our touchstone to declaration of independence. we work so that we might more perfectly realize the promise of equality so that all people can live an adjust and free society and that starts with young people. it starts with giving them a vision of what that would mean and showing them their place in that and our work is really defined by providing a library of free resources it now numbers some 4,000 all of them are available to teachers and then professional learning programs that are held around the country in one of those resources. we were able to partner with two organizations represented here the john f kennedy presidential library museum and also the ronald reagan presidential library in museum, we integrated lesson plan from those two organizations into a comprehensive history of the united states, and we find that when you have point counterpoint, and you ask students to to weigh in on controversial things that they capable of doing so. and i think what we need is a nation is to say we support educators in talking about divisive concepts. there's no need to shy away from things that divide us because as was said last night the most important word in the constitution is we we have to go to those things because after all isn't the constitution a guide to managing disagreement it's not our purpose as a people to eliminate disagreement. it's to come to a place in which we can go about our conversations work together to find that we and to to manage the the profound and and important differences that exist in a nation of 330 million people. indeed i i would add to david what you said about young people and and how they're so very capable and eager to learn and to attack big issues. i don't think we give them enough credit. you know, i think adults who are making some decisions about what should or should that be learned in a history classroom. just not getting giving kids enough credit. i know from my experience with national history day students is first of all, they're not they're not jaded by years of experience. they come at this fresh and they're looking at the primary materials. so there are allowing the historical characters to speak for themselves and and then they're interpreting the information and drawing conclusions about the why answering what we always say to students at national history is so what know why should we care about that and and there are a lot plenty of reasons why we should and the are wonderful about. thinking about those kinds of things and and studying the past. they find their heroes in the past. they find that ordinary people do extraordinary things and it encourages them and it builds empathy and we need to need to allow our teachers to do more of that with their students. i'm going to turn to tim bailey tim is director of curriculum and development and instructional design at the gilder. laraman institute for american history. so tim moon ask you how does the study of history play a role and encouraging? civic engagement, but also in sustaining democracy. i think kathy and thank you everyone. it's a pleasure to be here and thanks for inviting our organization to speak that i think that history education and the study of history is you cannot separate that from civic education. i mean they are one in the same to separate them as artificial and i know it gets done in school systems a lot, but it's it's kind of a way to to educate students in not recognizing the importance of history and how that is where civics evolved from. there's a so the the gillilerman institute was founded 27 years ago by mr. richard gilder and lewis lerman two friends who were entrepreneurs who had a love of american history and over a number of years built the largest private collection of american history documents in the world at that time. they then decided well now what are we going to do with this? and so they said well we can use this to give to a back to our mom alder we can make a museum we can but what really wanted to do is get into the hands of students into the hands of children for exactly this purpose to teach them a love. and an appreciation for american history and how evolution of a people how that had how that had happened. so they created the institute and we now have over 80,000 documents in our collection. and that's the foundation of our of the institute in the work that we do. and to answer your question. that study of american history by teaching history through the words of the people who made history. not someone's interpretation, but through this teaching students how to study history in order to gain their own understanding and their own appreciation of their civic role and i think that once you can once you get students thinking about where did we come from? equals who we are there's a we have a couple of we created a post route of two of our documents and our collection that i think is really compelling and speaks to what has been set up here, but also to what was emphasized last night. that one of the pope one of the pieces on the poster is a draft of the constitution during the constitutional convention one thing that to get across the students students studying history when you talked about this, you know being dead boring. absolutely the other thing that they considered this has been carved in stone, right? this is always how it was going to happen. there's there's none of this. yeah, right this sense of at the time history was happening. nobody was new what was going to happen then so that's lost on stew. that's something you really need to instill in them. well one of the copies of the draft of the constitution says we the states of and list the states. and then goes on to into the articles. we have that on one side of the poster on the other side of the poster. it says we the people of the united states. that shift in american thinking that ideological shift that happened from thinking of from the articles of confederation of each separate state as its own little country. to we the people as one nation. is huge and that and that goes throughout our history how our country has evolved how that house how things have have we thought of ourselves and reflected on ourselves as a nation and as a people and as the role of individuals have in that is something that you can instill in students through the study of the words of the events of our past that lead them into that civic role. and was already said right you talked about that the foundational aspect of civics is history. and that's that's really the role that we see. we have a program that we developed called teaching civics through history. and it has three components to it. and the first component is laying that foundation. and so let's say that the topic is free speech. we go through the evolution of free speech in the country and teach the students that the second piece is current events. and we wrap current events into okay what's being talked about in free speech and we look at all sides, right? we look at we literally look at all sides. we partnered with a website all sides to help look at right left center and so students can see it from different but now they're looking at it from a point of view of informed. scholarship instead of opinion and then we go into exactly as you alluded to what do you do about it right now take these passions this these concepts this knowledge you have and go out in the community and make a difference. and so that that progression from history to action i think is an absolutely natural one and and is something that we see a great response to. and in response to your your comment about your poster. it sounds like what you've done is shown how it was these united states then became the united states and a big difference there. yeah, right. i want to talk a little bit about what role presidential sites can play in helping teachers navigate through this this current time? and but also i'd like to talk a little bit about what it means to teach inclusive histories. that's another hot button right now that we're hearing about is teaching inclusive histories teaching history that make people our students feel uncomfortable and and being teachers being told they're not allowed to do that. well, there are some parts of our history that we're just uncomfortable. that is the way that it that it was. how do we help our teachers be comfortable teaching the uncomfortable? yeah, i i mean i know david and i had a conversation with a reporter from the new york times asking that exact question to us. how are you helping teachers deal with this period in our in our in our history and our the current situation teachers find themselves in you know, how are your organizations helping with with that and i think that one of the things that we did as an organization is after the george floyd murder i said, you know we need to address this in some fashion not we're an absolutely a political organization but teachers need to you know are going to be asked by students and they need to have someone helping them. and so what we did was we put together a program called. how did we get here? and i invited a scholar who i have a lot of respect for hassan kwame jeffries from ohio state came in and did a history of race relations in african-american experiences for us and then we did a pedagogical session on. okay. now you've heard this history. how do you take this into your class and teach it and we provided a lesson plan and some some approaches for teachers to take back to their classrooms. it was it was so popular that i intended originally as a one-off right? we're going to do this, you know this and then it was it was so popular that now it's a monthly program we take on an issue. so for instance last month again you talk about president right where things just last month. we did one on the history of us foreign policy. which is a little bit in the news right now, and so and how you know helping teachers. how do you approach these questions that students are coming with from a historical, you know point of view and and how has that issue evolved in our history? yeah, i think it's twofold. i think one of them one of the issues is what david touched on earlier. we've got to get over this squeamishness we have about discussing conflict in the classroom. i mean our american history is not pretty all the time right and and in the history as well as today, there's lots of controversy. there's lots of things that need to be discussed kids are willing to take this on and look i'm we are a nonpartisan organization our biggest, you know proponent our position is that there should not be partisanship in the classroom, but you can have honest discussions. if they're steeped in fact and in knowledge, and i think that's a big. issue that we're having right now, i mean we are from all over the country. i'm from texas. she would have never guessed by my accent, right? we obviously had a big legislature session here where you know education legislation relative to what teachers can and can't teach in the classroom was a big center of debate. it's going around in all the states and whether you're in a red state or a blue state you're going to have an all likelihood if you haven't already you will in the next few terms legislation that that talks about that and it is critical. we fought very hard here in texas to preserve the ability to teach current events and to talk about these things. so it's important that they're support for teachers both from society at large as well as their administration to having these discussions in the classroom, but the second critical critical piece to that is professional development for teachers. they don't know how to have these conversations safely in a manner that doesn't either turn political or that doesn't cause an uproar in their classroom. or doesn't land them on the front page of the newspaper the next day because some parents mad about what was discussed in the classroom. they don't have that training and i will tell you from talking the teachers directly. they don't get the opportunities to go get the training because once again social studies is the bottom of the heap in the education world. they just are and with limited budgets administrators. i hear this all the time from teachers principles. do not i'll have the budget for social studies teachers to get. to get substitute teachers into the classroom so that they can go take a day and get trained. even the teachers that want to get the training even when there's access to the training they can't get there because they don't have the budget to get out of school and have somebody take over their classroom. it's a really desperate state of affairs. so we have to have accessible professional development. either tim or bob one of you alerted alluded to this as well earlier about the fact that most of our a social studies teachers a good majority of them frankly are coming out of college teaching these subjects in the last history or government class. they had was in high school. maybe they'd graduated in a state that required. they'd take an entry-level college history or government course, maybe but that's even just a few states. so and then we're thrusting this on them and it's tough stuff so we would need and that sort of circles back to your question about how to presidential sites help. um, you know in texas we just got through with a big campaign on this legislation and one of the things we were able to accomplish is getting a requirement. it's called civic academies that teachers and administrators which was important that had been administrators as well get certain amount of professional development training in social studies specifics history government all of the above. and part of that program that's getting set up has to include good rich resources for helping teachers navigate these minefields in their classroom. there's a lot of great teachers out there and that really want to do the right thing and they really want to teach well if we just give them the resources and the support to do that and they need that to be consistent and you know, not just the one shot now the quick workshop or the the one hour webinar but some consistency in helping them. not just understand and sift through the materials that you might have but the training and how to think is what what's really important here is helping young people learn how to think critically so we have to help their teachers do the same and and they just just haven't had the opportunity to manage the discussion, right? it's just part of it training in that. i mean, it's it can get complicated you will have kids with you know, hot sports opinions coming into the classroom and how to manage those discussions appropriately so we can give them a model of what civil discourse in our nation should look like and i think that's the key thing that teachers model civil discourse and when they're when they're working as i think the lion share of educators to across this country to teach how to think not what to think. it's incumbent on the rest of us regardless of our roles, but i think it's particularly critical that the presidential states are stepping up and and helping to support the educators in this effort. let me just build on what was said by painting a day in the life if you're showing up in the classroom and you're one of the nations 200,000 social studies educators at the middle school or high school level and it's january 7th, 2021. you know what you're going to talk about. you know what you're going to engage those students on but what you don't know is what you're building principle or the superintendent or the legal counsel for that district might be saying because oftentimes there's subtle but steady pressure to avoid those kind of discussions. and i think what we need in the united states is really a new kind of social compact. we need parents to come alongside educators and say we support a viewpoint diverse classroom one that roots conversations in the study of primary source documents. that asks students to engage in these topics. and and asks of parents that they would come alongside teachers in that effort to to really engender the kind of conversation that we're not seeing modeled very much from from washington dc or our state capitals if we can embark upon that task i'm confident that our nations educators are up to it. we see it every day, you know those kind of professional learning programs is what is the bread and butter of our work at the bill of rights institute and to date we've had 25,000 educators come through programs of one day in length or more. they're very interested in gaining the tools. by which they can lead those discussions and by which their young people who are in their in their charge can emerge capable of having them outside of the classroom. yeah, i think i think that the i mean the key to all this is is training is getting teachers. i think that all three of us would all four of us are i would agree that it's there's there's nothing that can substitute for having a teacher learn how to do this. well and you know all of our organizations work with that goal in mind. i mean we all train teachers and we have a network of over 30,000 affiliate schools and their teachers who who work with us that we communicate with regularly and we reach out and work with school districts all over the country and at state levels and many of the historical associations here. we work with we partner with many of you and programs that to train teachers. so i this is something that again it's not it's not a mystery right this this is it's not like we're you know, we're trying to to figure out a puzzle here. we know what do. it's it's it's more of a lack of. social initiative of the country taking you know saying this is important. this is what the direction we need to be moving. this is what we should be investing in. i mean, i think we have a lot of the answers. it's just implementing them. well, i would i mean to further answer your question about what can this presidential sites do i mean, i'll give you some very very specific task and you know, there's reformation happening in a lot of the areas of the country. there's a lot of as alluded to earlier state legislation that's happening check into what's going on in your state and find out i mean here in texas we've started a coalition to now that we're through the legislative phase. we're doing the the heavy lifting now of the civic academy's preparation as well as revision estate standard, so and so forth presidential sites, can offer locations for students for teacher training? right, and there's going to be a lot of programs and certainly in the state of texas is going to be a lot of programs going on at a local as well as statewide nature where you can get involved in providing resources and providing. speakers that can come help with professional development training, you know, there is and just as tim's spoke about the general support as well support the efforts to get behind the education community so that there is a willingness among the society among your local area among the administrators to teach the civics and history and to have their teachers appropriately trained. so there's lots of very on the boots on the grab on the ground type of efforts that the presidential site can absolutely get involved in right now. we're sort of preaching to the choir, of course. so what we need to do we all need to engage in civic engagement by writing to contacting calling getting meetings with with not just teachers and helping them with materials, but with school administrators and also with members of congress members of state legislatures, i think if we all could engage in that kind of civic work then hopefully we can help people understand people in those policy making positions understand how critical it is that we continue to teach history and teach it in a meaningful way and more of it. and not let it. remain in the back burner of the curriculum in our schools. i think it's absolutely critical. yet. i was just going to say that that burner thing that's been you know a lot we've been fighting that for a long long time. when the common core state standards came out one of the things that i have said to and to our organization is look let's you know we after no, child left behind had pushed history to the back burner because it wasn't tested right it was it was english language arts and math and science were being tested and if it's a not a tested subject the arts and history really took a beating. with no, child left to high and we're like, okay, maybe that i mean after that was was common core. well, maybe this will change things you look and then it's not going to unless so we had to be sneaky, right we had to figure out look let's make history primary source documents the nonfiction part of the english language requirements, right and that way they'll teach the gettysburg address because it's part of ela and federal budgeting is part of math. yeah. that's ridiculous. why should you have to try to be sneaky to figure out how to teach history? there's just something wrong in that but it was necessary. we developed program called teaching literacy through history and i would approach administrators to get that program in their schools by saying this will raise your ela scores. not that it's a good idea to teach history. and so, you know those kinds of adaptations shouldn't be necessary, but they are, you know, our, you know our mission to get students to to understand. appreciate and love american history that represents now who you are. we did whatever it took to make that happen. here's the good news though a lot of our fellow citizens have awakened to the fact that history and civics education is not just a nice to have but isn't as a necessary thing, and i think we need to build on that. i'm bullish on opportunity here for parents to come forward and say from the local level. where overwhelmingly we still want surveys indicate education to be a local matter. let's going to take a renewal of that kind of involvement recent surveys have showed that 70% of parents are very skeptical and very concerned about intrusions. from politicians writing curriculum, i would suggest that whether it's at the federal level or at the state level that that's going to be going in a wrong direction. and so that kind of bottom-up change that many of your presidential sites. i think can be an important part of the other thing that i would say in terms of encouraging the work that you do is don't shy away from those things that are the most controversial thing. it's a good thing for students and teachers who are part of your educational programming to be able to understand that that you want those conversations to happen and that you're in fact interested in bringing that kind of opposing a perspective and allowing them to see how would a conversation rich in content be carried on in their classrooms about the particular president or historical figure that you're that you're looking to to focus on. yeah, and i think i'm gonna interrupt just from it because we have only a few minutes left for question and answer. so anyone have a question or comment back there i think you need to. run up here to the microphone. anyone else who has a question can can come up to the microphone. good morning. thank you for this panel. so i think it's fair to surmise that everyone in this room operates in the world of facts and reality and good faith discussions across difference, but outside the walls of this room something like 20 or 30 percent. of the rest of the country has fallen down the rabbit hole of these bizarre conspiracy theories and qanon and this other nonsense. how are you all thinking about how to address that extremely corrosive development in our nation, which i think is really without precedent. i think it's a great question. i i've thought about doing even a study and lesson plans on this because it's a question that that our teachers 60,000 strong across the united states ask us. and i would suggest. that there's something that you might not at first think of. people who fall prey to conspiratorial thinking and especially who think of the other side whatever might the other side be. that there's a kind of contempt for that other side and a wish that they would just vanish. are lacking something that has been the hallmark of the trust that must uphold a constitutional democracy and that's something that that we probably take for granted. it's civic friendship. people who fall into conspiratorial thinking find solidarity most of all in that thinking. and what i think we have to do is and this is where presidential site civic ed organizations really the definition of civic engagement is to reach out to people who you might otherwise write off. they might hold views that are approprious to you. but they are desperately without being able to articulate it themselves seeking french they are looking for a group to belong to and they have found it in that very powerful mode of thinking that exists in conspirate conspiracy theories and what i think we have to do. is think how can we reach out to people who write now have been so desperate that they would turn to those kind of awful things because they are bad. how can we rebuild those bonds of trust and civic friendship and i would add too that. it's very important that we emphasize the importance of evidence evidence matters, and that's something that we preach to our history day students all the time that you know when you draw your conclusions and your interpretations and present your information. i don't want your opinion. i don't really care about your opinion in this situation. i want to know your historical argument about your topics importance in history based on the evidence backed up by evidence, and i think we've lost that that's one of the civic skills that we talked about. you've got to start this current generation as early as kindergarten. i mean, honestly they have to be taught in early age civic skills that will enable them to see excuse me, the factual basis that they need to be looking for the the accuracy of the information. they're being given and otherwise we live in a society where they just live in social echo chambers and preaching also multiple perspectives. you can't just look at one side of the event of individual what happened in the past. you've got to look at all the angles and that's that's very important. hello, i'm catherine algarve from the massachusetts historical society. and i was reflecting as you were asking, you know, what can presidential sites do i was in my own way thinking what can presidential sites do what can we do and i'm thinking about my own, you know organization, which has a fabulous collection and great research program, and we're very fancy and prestigious the truth is we have two people on our education committee. and so i think that one of the things that we struggle with is is really the lack of resources. so how do we overcome that? and i think of it kind of as a ninja model, i think you need to figure out what you can do with the staff and resources you have what you can do really well get in there and do it if it's what people want and kathy gordon is not paid me off. i just have to say national history day which we are the sponsors for massachusetts has been a godsend because it is a very specific. of skills a lot of work, but it's a very specific set of skills that are very relevant to historians the ability to research look at evidence create arguments make what we don't ever use this term but a thesis statement using evidence and that's something that even though right now we're deep in the history day contest. my staff is horribly overworked, but they would say very proudly that even with the staff of two we can make an enormous amount of difference in our case for about 6,000 students a year and growing. well, i think that's the key you hit on is looking for good partnerships. right? right. we recognize that i mean presidential sites and in the organizations running them have lots of influence. the name carries a lot of respect that is helpful, and there's lots of great civic education organizations, you know ours and many others creating good resources. it's not that you have to have a huge staff, but if you can partner with some of those organizations to add context and insight at times and also just to help get the word out the support you lend to that can really help usage at the school level as well. it is value and reach right and you can you can multiply your impact just by partnering and linking to you know resources. i mean we have thousands of available resources that are free for for educators use and just and so you may have this much but been by linking to other organizations and their resources all of a sudden you've multiplied what you can offer through your you know, your organization and say look we have this to offer you and i think it's important also distress the fact that you know, what catherine pointed out about having just two people in education, you know, that's that's usually the thing that is cut first when you have to cut in your budget education goes and that's very unfortunate but but as nonprofits and educators we are good at doing a lot with little with very little unfortunately. we can't keep trying to gain more but but there is an awful lot that we can do and the checks in the mail and i'll declare publicly we will never count education at the massachusetts historical society now he's recorded. there's another thing that many of you might already have been involved in. that's the educating for american democracy project. it's a cross ideological endeavor several years now in the making that makes a kind of double helix out of civics and history. i've been a part of it and and have been proud to see what's what's emerged just in the understanding, but also now a network of organizations a hundred strong across the united states that are saying we need to prioritize the teaching of civics and history and here are concrete ways through a 40-page roadmap of really very solid questions. how do we answer? these questions is the task ahead of inquiry-based method asking questions getting parents educators other stakeholders in the community involved is what educating for american democracy is all about. we have a question here. yes, good morning. i'm eric montgomery. i'm with the wilson boyhood home in augusta, georgia. my question is about the 250th coming up. will there be resources that will allow for us to further what we're talking about this morning? and also how how will the presidential sites and other historic sites be able to tap into that and i'll just end by saying? it i remember the bicentennial and there was i don't know. i was not i was you know young at the time so i don't know how it happened, but there was a lot that went on there must have been a lot of resources involved in that and funding. are we going to have that again? i know that there's a specific session at lunchtime 250 for lunch, right? however, i mean i just speak for my organization. so gilda lemon is to we just recently in the last of four to six weeks or so put up a page specifically on the 250th and we took all of our many resources that are related to the 250th and put among that page. and so and they're you know, they're organized by tab. so you can click this. here's essays by historians on the on the topic here are videos here are timelines lesson plans documents from our collection and so on and i'll organize into one place and again, you know, those are all free resources any educator can go to our website if they don't already have an account create a free account and go in and access all of that and like i said before, you know, the institute we partnered with many historic presidential historic sites and you know, i'd be more than happy to talk to you about how to access our materials and and work together. so it's work that we've done we find that the presidential sites extraordinarily important in our work to refer to some of the david was talking about and how to not being afraid of engaging in those tough conversations. one of the i worked with the eisenhower library and we did it. i build a lesson plan around a little rock incident and incredibly contentious and use letters from the their collection of people for and against the that order and students it sucks them in because these are real voices those primary documents talk to those kids because this is this is what somebody really said. this is not somebody talking about what they said. these are their words and their incredibly offensive or they're incredibly hopeful or supportive or whatever, but it's the real voice of that person and students, you know students are compelled by that. i think every civic education organization is standard getting geared up for that. and so there will be a lot of recent. i know we're working with the library of congress as well as a number. we're going back through we have a quite a few history games history related games that we're revamping for purposes of that, but you know for years we didn't talk about what you said earlier about trying to sneak it through tell them in different places constitution week has always a big big thing in social studies because you knew that was a week you were gonna get some airtime and so we would always revamp resources for that week. so in the same kind of way, i think most civic education organizations are really building. there will be a lot to talk about and to do more than just a day concentration day one day. we're going to study the constitution. yeah, that's just crazy and then here i am running organization called national history day and i get it. it's not just the so but remember the bible history life the national history day experience. i you know now we're international too. so the add all that on too. we just call it nhd. it's a lot easier, but i remember a bicentennial minutes in '76 some of you remember that right. it was more actually a celebration back then i think now it's going to be a commemoration and so a much deeper study of not just the founding of our country and the the declaration and but also the expanse of 250 years and looking at how our founders with their ideals their principles those founding principles and how they were applied at the time. versus how have we tried to expand on that application over the last 250 years. so it's it's really an exciting time to be involved in all of that. and that goes kathy doesn't does it not to the question about inclusive history. i think of john lewis in this know, he used a remarkable phrase that i think captures what what is so much a part of of our task at the bill of rights institute, but the task more broadly of civic education completing the revolution of 1776. stewart, i know we only have a little bit of time. can we one more question good morning. i'm lorna johnson from the committee member of the white house historical association. i'm from california and my sister is a professor. she's a middle school teacher principal and one of the problems that i find trying to get her involved in some of these things this time. they really they're so overwhelmed, you know, not having adequate resources. and another thing is a question of what you bring into the classroom how it's presented and the controversies people are afraid to make mistake. how do we try to get attention to that and address some of these situations because we all know the right thing and we are basically preaching to the choir here, but how do we get some of these things implemented and how do we get people to be? comfortable speaking about the what is uncomfortable and not being getting some kind of repercussions for saying the wrong thing or making mistakes. i think the time issue and david mentioned this earlier we're involved with this education from american democracy and that came out of a national endowment for the humanities grant in the idea was we've heard this for years teachers don't have time social studies teachers have to teach economics world geography civics history. you know, you name it everything gets thrown at finance gets thrown under there. how do you let them teach. more in less time and so that was really the point of this roadmap is it shows teachers how to integrate history and civics in a way. it's two sides of the same coin and they can get more and by using the inquiry-based method they can get deeper in a faster manner. it's scaffolded. it's it covers elementary all the way through high school. and so we're really busy trying to promote that across the country everywhere from a you know, grassroots local level at school boards to in a state in national level as well getting people teachers introduced to this resource that can help them be more efficient in their teaching and i think with regards to the controversial topics that goes back to what we've been talking about throughout the day. it's professional development. you have to give the teachers training and sometimes it's really it's almost like what you know in my prior profession it would be like a mock trial setting you get them in a classroom setting and you literally help them understand by doing it building these controversial. questions and how to turn it into appropriate inquiry without it becoming hostile debate in the classroom and giving them the primary documents that they need they can speak for for those in the past. and right now i'm looking at the monitors and it's going over time over time and program and program which i'm going to do, but i'm going to i'm going to legal green you're okay until it turns red orange stewart gets the cane and pulls me off the diets here a little leave you with with just this an example of how studying history can get students excited and interested in making a difference. so some years ago our students in chicago. wanted to look at the mississippi burning case of 1964 for three individuals from chicago went down to mississippi to register voters and were brutally murdered and no one was ever arrested or tried. there was no justice for that. that occurrence students wanted to look at that so they dug in and they read through 2,000 pages of fbi transcripts. they interviewed the families of each individual who was murdered and they got an interview with edgar ray killen who at the time was the alleged murderer or even though he was never arrested or tried for it at that time and after they they did then he wanted to talk to anybody, but he's talked to these three 16 year olds. after they went through all of that and they went to their teacher and said justice can be served there really is evidence here. and a good social studies teacher said what are you going to do about it? and so they turned over their material to the fbi. they lobbied the governor of mississippi. they went on the hill and talked to congress the case was reopened and edgar ray killen went to jail. history works thank you so much.