NARA Boosts Civic Education Programs Nationwide

A great historian and good friend of the National Archives, David McCullough, once briefly defined history as “who we were and why we are the way we are.” Another great historian, also a friend of the Archives, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., has observed that “history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.” These distinguished scholars distilled in a few words what we at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have in mind and spirit as we go about our work. We are the nation’s record keeper, of course, but we also bear special responsibility for ensuring that these records—some famous, others quite ordinary—have consequential meaning for the American people to whom they belong. They are records that deserve preservation not simply for reference purposes but for use by all interested Americans. If the American people do not maintain a solid and respectable measure of civic literacy, however, they will not be able to understand or use these records effectively. For that reason alone, NARA considers civic education essential and an important element of our overall mission and goals.

This year, despite the absence of increased government funding for new initiatives, NARA continues to expand and enhance the museum, education, communications, and public outreach programs aimed at increasing levels of civic literacy.

In Washington, D.C., our Learning Center serves as a central focus of NARA’s efforts to help teachers make the study of history, civics, and social studies more engaging, interesting, and important for students. This summer, NARA’s education specialists will offer our highly successful Primarily Teaching workshops at eight locations around the country: in Washington; at regional archives in California, Texas, and Massachusetts; and at the Eisenhower, Johnson, Ford, and Bush presidential libraries.

Taking our civic literacy efforts directly into homes, we have partnered with the Mini Page, which is syndicated in more than four hundred newspapers around the world and reaches millions of children and their families.

In NARA’s downtown Washington, D.C., building, the National Archives Experience includes the popular and engaging Public Vaults permanent exhibit. And the highly-successful exhibit, Eyewitness: American Originals from the National Archives, has taken to the road for two years, starting at the Carter Library in Atlanta. Future stops include the Ford and Nixon libraries as well as institutions in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Nebraska. A new exhibit, School House to White House—examining the early education of modern Presidents—will open in the Lawrence F. O’Brien Gallery in March and run through the end of the year. In 2008, it will show at several of the presidential libraries.

At Federal Hall National Memorial in New York City, NARA and its partner, the National Park Service, are developing a permanent exhibit that will feature historic documents related to New York City as the nation’s first capital under the U.S. Constitution.

This fall, C-SPAN will examine each of our presidential libraries in a dozen two-hour specials in prime time. On the Internet, you’ll find a new interactive Presidential Timeline, where you can learn what an American president was doing on any particular day from 1929 to the present.

NARA also continues its longstanding education activities, such as its involvement in National History Day—at the local, state, and national levels—and in Teaching American History grants, in which staff in Washington, at many of the libraries, and at regional facilities around the country all participate.

The records NARA holds at thirty-four locations around the country chronicle not only the landmark decisions and historic statements of important figures, but also the records of actions involving the federal government taken by or for American citizens. Indeed, there are many extraordinary but as yet undiscovered stories still to be found in our billions of documents. As President Harry S. Truman, a shrewd, self-educated student of history, once noted, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” At all our facilities, staff and volunteers stand ready to assist visitors in finding the records they seek and in helping them assess the information, meaning, and historical context of those records. Our hope is that by the time you leave, you not only have the records you need but have also expanded your civic education usefully.  “When the past no longer illuminates the future,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “the spirit walks in darkness.” At the National Archives, we promise to continue working diligently to light the path for that walk into the future.