Over the past few years, Youth Connection Charter School campuses have been integrating a civic engagement component into their social studies curricula. This past academic year, due to the generosity of the Gilder Lehrman Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation, many YCCS students were able to attend performances of the musical Hamilton at the cost of $10.00 per student as a complement to their civic engagement studies.
As this 4th of July approaches, we celebrate our nation’s independence achieved in 1776. Yet our students now ponder Alexander Hamilton’s words, written eleven years later in 1787, in Federalist Paper 1 asking “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”
Somehow these words of Hamilton ring true today in our current American political situation. Let us hope, on this Independence Day, 2017, our imperfect government can become better through reflection and good choices, and that ultimately a more perfect Union can be achieved.
Our Civic Engagement students and teachers greatly appreciate the educational resources from the Gilda Lehrman Institute of American History that enhance their learning and understanding. Read more about the Fourth of July and its meaning.