At 250, the Declaration of Independence still sparks hard questions in classrooms, educators say—questions about who the Revolution was fought for, who received the benefits promised in its language, and how students are meant to weigh the documents when political pressure can shape what feels “safe” to teach.
For many teachers, those questions show up first in how students interpret familiar slogans. Longtime history teacher Karalee Wong Nakatsuka, who teaches mostly Asian eighth-graders in Arcadia, California, keeps two nearly identical “Created Equal” T-shirts: one celebrating the Declaration’s 1776 signing and the founding fight for freedom from the British Crown, and another from Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., marking Abraham Lincoln’s assassination 89 years later. Nakatsuka, the child of Chinese immigrants, uses the contrast to prompt discussion about the promise of “All men are created equal,” which the nation took its time to bestow on African Americans, and she said her classroom is already trying to process contemporary issues that can make citizenship and equality feel immediate.
Other teachers are trying to push students beyond first impressions of the founding documents. At East Kentwood High School in Western Michigan, history teacher Matthew Vriesman said he challenges students to ask, “Who was it originally for? Who is it for now?” He said the 250th anniversary gives students a chance to think deeply about the Declaration’s vision of “all men created equal” and ask how that experiment is going.
Education groups say that even when teachers want to teach the anniversary thoughtfully, they are doing it in a climate of uncertainty and scrutiny. In a survey iCivics produced ahead of the anniversary, more than half of respondents said teaching basic civics concepts now feels “difficult,” and nearly six in 10 reported worrying about backlash for teaching something the “wrong way.” The survey also found that about 20% of teachers said they had experienced actual backlash for lessons they taught, and more than one in three said they changed or removed lessons they typically teach because of school or community climate. “Civics teachers are not OK, and that stinks, no matter what year it is,” iCivics chief education officer Emma Humphries said. “But it’s really awful when we should be in a more celebratory mood.”
iCivics, a nonprofit that designs civic education curricula and games, created a campaign called We Can Teach Hard Things for the anniversary, using the tagline that the organization said it would not stop teaching algebra when polynomials get hard—and that civics lessons should not be paused when explaining the rule of law gets hard. Despite the pressures, teachers said they still prioritize the Revolutionary period and the founding documents. The article also said that a 2024 American Historical Association survey found the Declaration, the founders and the American Revolution were the top favorites among teachers.
To help students stay engaged while learning material that can be politically fraught, educators and museums are leaning more heavily on “historical empathy” and on primary sources. In Philadelphia, teacher Samantha Dowis watched students light up during a tour of the Revolution Museum, identifying George Washington and where he crossed the Delaware River to New Jersey. But when asked who the Hessians were at the Battle of Trenton exhibit, the article said no hands went up, prompting a focus on the terms and the people behind the story. Dowis said she was not worried because students were just beginning to understand why 2026 is significant.
Dowis and others said the challenge is keeping attention and emphasizing compelling narratives connected to political ideals while competing against misinformation online. She said students sometimes want to discuss race and slavery; she avoids politics when she can, but if students ask questions about how different groups experienced history, she said teachers “definitely talk about it” and “make sure to hear everybody’s perspective, and not just one voice.” She said by the time students leave fifth grade in Maple Shade, New Jersey, they have learned about enslavement not only in the American colonies but in other cultures as well.
Museum leaders said they found that story-centered teaching helps students relate to history’s everyday participants. Michael Hensinger, who oversees K-12 education for the museum, said it can be difficult to relate to general figures like a king or queen and that lessons can become more successful when they involve everyday people. The museum, the article said, frontloads stories of civilians and soldiers caught up in the war, including Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut teenager who joined the state militia in 1776 and later re-enlisted for the war’s duration, and London Pleasants, an enslaved 15-year-old in Virginia who in 1781 joined Loyalist forces under Benedict Arnold’s command.
Others said young people are drawn to narratives but may not always rely on accuracy. Lauren Tarshis, author of the young adult novel series I Survived The American Revolution, 1776, said kids are curious and pointed to how students turn to YouTube for real stories—“not all of them historically accurate.” Tarshis said her approach does not shy away from difficult topics in history and argued that young readers often accept challenges if there is “hope at the end.”
The Digital History Group’s Reading Like a Historian program is built around competing primary accounts and questions such as who shot first at the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775. Joel Breakstone, a co-founder of the program and a former Stanford History Education Group director, said, “History has never been uncontested,” reflecting an approach that asks students to examine primary sources and wrestle with different perspectives rather than accept a single simplified narrative.
Teachers said classroom discussions about founding ideas increasingly intersect with contemporary policy debates. Vriesman said his district is helping students understand new federal immigration policies and that the area has seen immigration raids and arrests that prompted students to walk out in protest. Even so, he said he is impressed each year by what students embrace before they even reach the document itself, describing what he called “basic Enlightenment values” and noting that students from around the world in a diverse Michigan district share views that people should be able to raise families without fear in a society based on who they are or where they are from.
Other students described their own ways of wrestling with contradictions in the founders’ message. The article said an 18-year-old named Christina Le, whose parents emigrated from Vietnam around 1999, told classmates that understanding the founders means seeing them as people shaped by the Revolutionary War’s context, with liberty pursued for some while broader questions about whose liberty was protected remain visible. Her classmate, 17-year-old Hawathiya Mulual, who the article said is the child of Sudanese and Ethiopian refugees, described thinking deeply about liberty and equal rights after seeing how hard it was to condemn police officers involved after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
Teachers also described how federal education priorities and commemorations can heighten tensions over “patriotic education.” The article said President Donald Trump signed an executive order last year pushing schools to promote “patriotic education,” and that the U.S. Department of Education announced grants designed to promote “informed patriotism and love of country.” Museums have protested as the administration pushed to rewrite displays to downplay the role of slavery, including a dispute in Philadelphia in which a federal judge ordered reinstatement of explanatory panels detailing the U.S. slave trade at the President’s House Site while litigation continues.
At the same time, some educators and researchers said the story is not as simple as slogans about teaching being one-sided. Brian Kisida, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and codirector of the university’s Arts, Humanities, & Civic Engagement Lab, said his research suggests that how U.S. history is taught cannot be reduced to a single definitive narrative. Kisida said that more than one in three high schoolers report their teachers “often” or “almost daily” argue America is fundamentally racist, while more than half say their teachers regularly discuss progress toward racial equality since the 1970s. Kisida also said teachers as a group come out more pro-America than the general public, saying 62% of teachers describe the U.S. as “a fundamentally good country,” compared with 55% of adults overall, and that 82% of teachers say it is important for kids to learn about the U.S. Constitution and its core values, compared with 75% of adults more broadly.
Kisida said that familiarity with the Constitution is not enough. The article quoted him arguing that teachers must explain why constitutional principles such as separation of powers are essential to democratic life and sustaining what he called the American experiment.
Teachers described how they try to keep patriotism from becoming rote. Vriesman said students can see through narratives that do not resonate with their lives, while his student Christina Le and other classmates said studying history helps them understand struggle and resistance and to avoid being stuck with only one perspective. Teachers said they also try to show founders as flawed human beings—while still presenting the ideals that their documents articulate.
At Vertex Partnership Academies in New York’s South Bronx, the article said CEO and co-founder Ian Rowe helped create 1776 Unites to highlight stories of Black achievement from across U.S. history after what he and others described as incomplete portrayals of American history. Rowe said, “You have to tell the whole story of our founding,” “warts and all,” and he argued that documents like the Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution enabled the country to move in a direction he described as unparalleled. The article also said that at Vertex, students recite the Constitution’s preamble each morning, and Rowe described the recitation as part of a mission of self-improvement, emphasizing that students are meant to understand they are active participants in securing the “Blessings of Liberty.”
In the end, educators said the 250th anniversary is less about crowning one version of the founders than about teaching students how to read and interpret the founding documents under pressure—using stories, evidence and multiple perspectives to connect past promises to present realities.