richard gilder and louis lehrman, two friends who had a love of history and built the largest privately collection of american history documents in the world at that time. they then decided, well, now what are we going to do with this? they said, we can use this to give back to our alma mater. we can make a museum. what they really wanted to do was get it into the hands of students, of children, for exactly this purpose, to teach them a love and appreciation for american history and how an evolution of a people, 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 the institute and 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 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 get students thinking about where did we come from equals who we are, we have -

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