boy take me to mount vernon and the white house and congress and to npts hall and that wowed me. it's 1850 and you are henry and you are daniel web and that was cool. i read storybooks and history books and books of the sort that david writes for non-scholarly audience. accessible to ordinary people. then i get to college and i read gordon woods's work. that's auto bigraph cal and i got into this. i do think the national constitution center is a great

public space and i really got to know gordon when he was the founder of the academic. >> you start very young, but let's say that you didn't have such parents and you get to college and you are required to take a course on the history of the constitution. i am required to take the course. how do you engage me. >> i think toll picks is sport. it can be fun. if can know about the baseball team and the football team, you can follow politics and know your presidents and every july 4th, we need materials. kid and family friendly and a

secular idea. we are not using -- and president's day as for proper occasions. to come up with colors and families. >> there too many sales out there and that's the problem. >> it can be like teams and competitions. kids like to compete and on knowing your constitution and the founders and politics. it's like following fun. >> what always strikes me is most people know at least a little bit about the declaration of independence, but little

about the constitution. i said that's the sex document that has the grand abstract prince wales and the constitution is as you said, the boring document because it's all about structures and processes and institutions and unfortunately what most people don't understand is that that declaration of independence would have been a dead letter after the war was over if there hadn't been a constitution. what i try to do in my teaching is try and restore some of that consingency of that young united states would have fallen apart. there would have been no united states after 1787 or 89 or 90. he thought that the constitution would fail because they didn't

pass one of the provisions and a veto on state laws. the ability to veto state laws. i think some of the things that they said about the ratification process and how it was a nationwide debate kind of reverend um, that can restore and people who i am able to get in the classes i think is the excitement about what it meant at the time and i would hope that would carry over to an understanding that we are the people today and without that constitution, it may not be there. i think we have been a victim of the success. we had the bucksry as a people to sit back somewhat ignorant of the structures and let the

process of government go along with deciding we may or may not vote it at any given election. again, voting was seen as this incredible privilege. it was incredible when people got to vote there. would be universal sufferage. that was a big rat cal innovation. we lost that sense of excitement and the innovation. >> they are at least partly responsible. people here at ou are fortunate. i will give you a fact that that's the leading tourn in

early american history. over the past 40 years, until last october, it was not a single article published that comes out four times a year, not a single article in history at the beginnings of the constitution and the issues involved, nothing. until october of this last year and that's a kind of star in the wind. we have to understand that this interpretation goes in fashions. over the last half century there other issues that have preoccupied the historical profession. issues of race and issues of women and legitimate issues that preoccupied graduate training and the writing of history in graduate schools. the law schools, constitutional history can continue and it's always there. i am talking about the under graduate schools that neglected

that. fashions change and some of the other older issues have been tired and young people are looking for new issues. i think this appeared in the october issue and it's a kind of indication of a new era e americaning in scholarship. >> david fisher? >> i find that history teaching and history learning is alive and well and flourishing in thousands of places around the country. it's not so flourishing in other parts. we may ask what works and what doesn't. to meet and talk to the incredibly creative, often young teachers in elementary school and high school especially. to be inspired by the possibilities. i think there more troubles in the colleges for reasons that gordon just described.

what seems to work, we are talking at a very young children is something that awakens a sense that others have walked this earth before them. something that also triggers an exercise in the imagination. there lots of ways of doing that. taking them there. telling them stories. kids love stories like that. then beyond that is a question of getting them embarked on inquiries that are meaningful to them from the start. questions that speak to their condition as well as others around them. then it keeps growing from there. other things that lost that sense of individual agency and academic history. we lost the stories and the

events. i would be hopeful for things. >> i want to remind you all, please hold the microphones very close so that everyone can hear you and when you turn to talk to your fellow panelists, take your microphone with you. >> this morning you talked very vividly and dramatically about the dead hands of history. i find myself wondering about the live hands of politics. and to what extent politics is beginning to undermine our sense

of this gorgeous document with all its failings, how politics is intervening in what we thought we had. as a constitutional democracy. >> i think the big problem is that people invoke the constitution, but they don't understand it. it becomes sacred scripture and it's supposed to be perfect. it's disabling for us to worship the constitution and it's quite a different thing to appreciate the achievement and to sense how they thought about future generations. i think that should be a model. this is what i would adopt with

the idea of the generational stewardship that we need to be concerned about the coming generations. a real crisis. if we think of the next generation and we have a trust that we have to fulfill towards them. this involves the commons. this involves things that we share. i think that's the crucial lesson of the founding and not that we need to say that's

perfect, but there is something and he put it brilliantly. the big democratic bang. that's up to us to cherish the legacy and keep it alive. not by making believe we are them and we can channel them and they want us to look forward. that would be my response much one thought is i wouldn't start with the constitution.

a better way than our survey. a three semester courses and each centered on one event. each covered 100 years & the students loved it. in terms of individual experiences and often link to their own experiences. they intrude the members of their family. they came away with very large processes. abstract questions such as the

constitution. good for that. i teach history and the constitution is part of that history. i teach a course on the revolutionary era and the constitution is a climax of that. politics in general, i'm reminded of rebecca west's statement. in politics, truth goes out the window when politics comes in. there is a problem with politic, especially democrats. because and we all sense this. there is a lock of honesty on the part of the politicians.

they are out to get punished. in the end, the problem is us. the american people. pogo is right. we met the enemy. we punish politicians and for telling the truth. it runs ramp aant throughout th system and it's an embarrassment to force the politicians to be disingenerous and not be honest. yet do we want them? that's the question. there is a real difficulty that we have to face as a democratic people to look at ourselves and ask ourselves, are we encouraging our political leaders to be what they ought to be? jefferson, washington, madison could not have survived in our

environment. they could not have been what they were and still survived. democracy, we pay a price for it. we should be aware of that price and should be careful about how we put our democracy together. it's not an easy task and think i just -- when i look at what political leaders have to go through, it's amazing that we have as many men and women willing to engage. we impose on it. >> david some i experimented with myself as a guest and professor at cornell one term. i strongly believe that we

should bring what i would call the lab technique to the teaching of the humanities in the sense of getting students to go into the lab, as it were, and work out the answer or the solution or the understanding of a subject or a problem on their own. working with other students. if i were assigned and it would depend on the level. if i were teaching at a college level, i would go about it this way and assign four students to work together and four others to work together and four more. each of them would be assigned to know about one single person to participate in the convention. they would be required to either present a report or say my name is james madison and here's the life i had and here's what happened to me. they would work at a table with

four at a table. you would get to know how the others did. by the individual life of each of these protagonists and see them as human beings and fallible. people struggling to do something right that is difficult to achieve and what they went through. i designed one person to do nothing but study the weather. we know what weather is like and summers are like in philadelphia. imagine you are couped up in a building and a room and you can't tell anybody what you are doing. everybody is asking you to find out. this has its own intrinsic dram a. the essence of the pull of history is people.

and to see them as not figures in history, but names in history and human beings, what was it like? and it always, always works. and i do one more thing and that is tell each student you can get help any way from anywhere you want. that's how you accomplish things in life. you don't have to do it all yourself. enlist your parents in the project. get somebody that you know to talk with you. use the telephone. ask questions. we don't train students well enough in my opinion to ask questions. they are required to have answers, but the way you find out is to ask questions. pull it out of people. there is not a single person any of us meet who is doesn't something we don't know. interview them.

>> i guess i want to take issue with the fundamental proposition that politics is separate from understanding the constitution. understanding the writing and ratification of the constitution is understanding politics. i think today the problem is that americans think that politics is so much worse than at any time in our history or even worse than that, they don't feel a connection between themselves and their government. the government is something in washington or in their state capital. i think there is just because people don't care or want to learn about history yuf, i think they don't understand the extend and the process of having a constitutional convention was fraught with controversy. the dynamics of the convention

were bitterly contested. the ratification contest was a slugfest. i think peter talked about the 1790s. the politics of the jeffersonians and the federalists is every bit as bitter as it is today. i think another of the points that we can make as history teachers is that it's not so different in the founding era as it is today. it's the sense of ownership and the sense of connection we feel with the process and with our involvement that makes it different. i think there is a real opportunity in teaching to show that it wasn't so different. >> i like team exercises. in high school i would have kids

work in teams. i like that a lot. i love role plays. and one advantage -- the earlier -- you have to develop a taste for these things. a bunch of things are not fun at the beginning, but are fun after a little bit. my kids are now after three years beginning to actually play piano as in playing and having fun and the first 2 1/2 years were not so fun. now it's fun. i do think that one advantage of the presidency is that it's a very personal thing. it remains the most personal office and it's a good way of getting people interested in

contemporary politics to learn about the past and organized around these very colorful personalities so when i'm a kid and they have 178-page histories, i actually get interested. you have to get people interested and there is a different way of doing it for science and math and a different thing for music. i like teams and i like role plays and i definitely like the presidency in particular. it's very personal. >> if i can just reflect on some of the experiences we have here over the last few years where we founded the program and enjoyed initial successes and i'm bragging a little bit, but we haven't let a fear of politics impede us. it always politicized, but it's one of the principals that they are bigger than politics.

the ground rule is that it's not constitutional or liberal, but the framework within which we decide our fate and we work hard to have the representation within the program. it's an element of our success. there one of two explanations. one is that we are starting to see an age where this is becoming exciting for academics or we updated and everyone respects him so it's easy. maybe a little bit of both. i do want to invite those of you who would like to pose your own questions to move to the microphone here on my left up front at any point. if i see someone there, i will call on you. the phones are open.

peter spoke of needing a renewal every 19 years or so and every generation. the idea was that our so-called founding fathers spoke out then, but what about now? have we reached a point in our history where you believe we need to gather ideas for taking a look at the mistakes and the wrong-doing that the

constitution -- i'm so sorry. is he all right? are you all right? okay. coming to the microphone. please be careful. the stairs. have we reached that point? >> two or three, i like to get people expressing opinions. this is especially true in a law school. my version of david's assignment, the teams might be who is the most overrated president? who is the most underrated? you have to take a position. what were the biggest mistakes in the past and what do you think the five biggest challenges of the future are

going to be? again, we can have teams and you can compete to win a prize for your team for the most interesting answer to that, but i do think on the challenges of our world, they are global challenges created by the internet and climate change and international terrorism and so some of the answers that we inherited don't make sense because those answers presuppose old world over there and new world here. we will keep them at bay and do our own thing. that's not their future. what are the five things that are going to be the biggest challenges? that will be a fun team stimt. that will have to be split cal. >> who are else wants to respond? rosemary?

>> it would be interesting to ask you all and students and the ought yenz if they wanted to take advantage of the clause in the constitution to allow us to call another convention. in our history that's never been done, we had one convention, but the constitution provides procedures by which we the people can reconstud ourselves as a convention of the people and have a new document. frankly i think if people would take that exercise seriously and start thinking about what a whole new constitution would look like, i think they would have a greater appreciation of the founders and two, i think they would appreciate the challenges of governing today in a more full way. >> david? >> really truly believe that it all comes back to or down to or

up to leadership. leadership at all levels, but particularly political leadership. here we are in one of the great universities in our country and the state university in which the president teaches a course on civics. imagine a president who is responsible for the enormous budget for 44,000 people if you count employees and the students. with all he has to contend with, takes time out to teach the course every year. i don't know of another president of a major university who teaches a course. maybe there some, but