The Kids Are All Right

In 2026, American adults are arguing about history. Congressional hearings about the Smithsonian Institution, the removal of interpretive signage at historic sites, and endless debates over what students should or should not be learning about the past have transformed the 250th anniversary of American independence into yet another forum for partisan political grandstanding and culture wars. Living in Germany during this anniversary year, I expected to spend much of my time explaining those controversies. Instead, students (and teachers) on both sides of the Atlantic reminded me why I fell in love with history in the first place.

In December 2025, my family and I moved to Frankfurt as part of the expatriate community surrounding the US Consulate General. On July 4, while Independence Day celebrations unfolded back home, we spent the day in Worms, where Martin Luther stood before the Imperial Diet in 1521 and refused to recant his beliefs. A few weeks later, I was in Philadelphia, studying one of the two surviving printed copies of the first German translation of the Declaration of Independence, produced just days after John Dunlap’s famous broadside printing, on display at the Museum of the American Revolution. While this translation sought to engage German-speaking readers across Pennsylvania, the Revolution has always been an international story.

My most memorable moments of this anniversary year, however, did not come from historic places or remarkable artifacts. They came from students.

In May, I spoke with a group of German teenagers participating in a Frankfurt–Philadelphia mural workshop, a weeklong exchange in which students worked with artists from both cities to design a mural inspired by democratic values. My talk was intended to provide both context and inspiration for a public art project that will be installed later this year in central Frankfurt. About half the students had never formally studied the American Revolution, and their questions were refreshingly direct: So what was the Declaration of Independence? Were any of the complaints against King George III actually true?

German students’ questions were refreshingly direct and set the stage for an inquiry-driven conversation.

These questions set the stage for an inquiry-driven conversation. I was struck by how differently a familiar document can look when approached not as an artifact of national reverence but as a historical claim to be examined, questioned, and tested against evidence. We talked about Jefferson’s soaring language of equality alongside the experiences of people such as Boston King and Prince Hall, who understood the Revolution as a moment of possibility even while confronting slavery, exclusion, and profound uncertainty. The students wanted to understand what it means for revolutionary ideals to co-exist with inequality in such uneasy tension—and why that tension still matters.

The same spirit of curiosity greeted me two months later in Philadelphia, where I served for the third time as lead historian for the Young People’s Continental Congress, a partnership between National History Day and Carpenters’ Hall, where the First Continental Congress met in 1774. Since 2024, students and teachers from across the United States and its territories complete five online modules before gathering for one week to explore the nation’s founding through original documents, museums, historic sites, and opportunities to learn with and from historians.

For many participants, the highlight is a visit to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, where they encounter archival collections, often for the first time. The students respond with many questions: Wait—is that really a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s poems? Why does this draft of the Constitution say “freedom of speech”?

This year, students seemed especially drawn to William Still’s Journal C of the Underground Railroad. Leaning over its pages, they traced the names, families, and journeys of men and women seeking freedom from slavery. Still recorded these stories at enormous personal risk, preserving fleeting moments of hope and courage that might otherwise have been lost forever.

Only a few blocks away, armed police stood watch over the President’s House after the recent removal of interpretive signage that had long foregrounded the lives of Ona Judge, Hercules, and other enslaved people connected to George Washington’s household. But in the archive, students quietly wrestled with evidence that complicated familiar narratives without diminishing the significance of the nation’s founding. They did exactly what historians hope every visitor to an archive will do: ask questions, weigh evidence, and embrace complexity.

In the archive, students quietly wrestled with evidence that complicated familiar narratives without diminishing the significance of the nation’s founding.

Perhaps that is what has given me the greatest hope in the year of America’s semiquincentennial. It is easy to become discouraged by the volume of political energy devoted to policing historical interpretation. Yet the young people I encountered in Germany and the United States were remarkably uninterested in rehearsing the arguments that so often consume adults. They asked generous and generative questions. They delighted in unexpected connections. They were drawn not to simplified stories but to richer, more complicated ones.

The work of historians is to help people encounter the past in all its complexity and humanity. Watching students do exactly that—whether encountering the Declaration of Independence for the first time in Frankfurt or touching and reading William Still’s journal in Philadelphia—was a welcome reminder that curiosity remains stronger than cynicism. History is much more compelling when we consider its human dimensions, when we can touch, explore, pose questions, recognize the limits of our understanding, and, most importantly, form our own conclusions grounded in evidence.

The adults will undoubtedly keep fighting over history. The kids, I am happy to report, are all right.