Americas 250th is an invitation to help kids understand exactly what this country is all about
As America approaches its 250th birthday, we’re about to hear a lot about the founders.Schools and sites of civic care will revisit the names and lives of George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and more.
There will be lessons about the extraordinary risks of the founders as they mutually pledged to each other, “our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor” at the end of the Declaration.We’ll celebrate the Revolution, reference the founding documents, claim the ideals as noble, gather family and friends for food and fireworks.And we should.But if looking to honor the past is all we do on July 4, 2026, we will miss out on a big opportunity to think about America in a way stands to make it a better country and a more perfect union.The founders didn’t call themselves “founders”; it wasn’t until President Warren G.
Harding spoke the phrase “Founding Fathers” in 1916 that we even had that term.Prior to that, each successive set of political leaders paid tribute to their “forefathers” for moving America forward into something new and better.But “founder” works for the modern ear as we cast the nation as some sort of grand start up.
Yet at 250 years in, it’s time for an updated notion of who ought to take on the work of making America what it is.America isn’t something that was “found” once and finished.
It’s a continual collective act of experimenting and finding.It’s something that must be built and rebuilt by every generation.We, the people, alive at this very moment, must take up the call of being the founders of today.
I spend much of my time talking to middle schoolers, high school students and college undergraduates about politics and government.And I often start with a simple exercise: I ask them what they’ve heard about the founders.They can usually tell me a few things.
They’ll give a few names.They’ll tell me there were all men, all landowners, and that a good number of them participated...