Disparate dispatches

There's been a lot of really great public addresses of various kinds on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. I thought I'd share a few.

1.

Here's one that is quite worth your time. Historian Heather Cox Richardson gave a talk on the 18th of April in the Old North Church – the very building where the two lanterns of legend were hung. It's an absolutely fantastic account of the events leading up to April 19, 1775 – a marvel of concision, coherence, and clarity – that I think helps really see them anew.

You can read it at her blog if you prefer, but I strongly recommend listening to her tell you this story in her voice, standing on the site.

2025 April 18: Heather Cox Richardson [YT]: Heather Cox Richardson Speech - 250 Year Lantern Anniversary - Old North Church (28 minutes):




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Informal poll:

I was just watching an activist's video about media in the US in which she showed a clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren schooling a news anchor about the relationships of the Presidency, Congress, and the Courts to one another. At one point Warren refers to this as "ConLaw 101" – "ConLaw" being the slang term in colleges for Constitutional law classes and "101" being the idiomatic term for a introductory college class. The activist, in discussing what a shonda it is a CNBC news anchor doesn't seem to have the first idea of how our government is organized, says, disgusted, "this is literally 12th grade Government", i.e. this is what is covered in a 12th grade Government class.

Which tripped over something I've been gnawing on for thirty-five years.

The activist who said this is in Oregon.

I'm from Massachusetts, but was schooled in New Hampshire kindergarten through 9th grade (1976-1986). I then moved across the country to California for my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school (1986-1989).

In California, I was shocked to discover that civics wasn't apparently taught at all until 12th grade.

I had wondered if I just had an idiosyncratic school district, but I got the impression this was the California standard class progression.

And here we have a person about my age in Oregon (don't know where she was educated) exclaiming that knowing the very most basic rudiments of our federal government's organization is, c'mon, "12th grade" stuff, clearly implying she thinks it's normal for an American citizen to learn this in 12th grade, validating my impression that there are places west of the Rockies where this topic isn't broached until the last year of high school.

I just went and asked Mr Bostoniensis about his civics education. He was wholly educated in Massachusetts. He reports it was covered in his 7th or 8th grade history class, as a natural outgrowth of teaching the history of the American Revolution and the crafting of our then-new form of government. He said that later in high school he got a full-on political science class, but the basics were covered in junior high.

Like I said, I went to school in New Hampshire.

It was covered in second grade. I was, like, 7 or 8 years old.

This was not some sort of honors class or gifted enrichment. My entire second grade class – the kids who sat in the red chairs and everybody – was marched down the hall for what we were told was "social studies", but which had, much to my enormous disappointment and bitterness, no sociological content whatsoever, just boring stories about indistinguishable old dead white dudes with strange white hairstyles who were for some reason important.

Nobody expected 7 and 8-year-olds to retain this, of course. So it was repeated every year until we left elementary school. I remember rolling my eyes some time around 6th grade and wondering if we'd ever make it up to the Civil War. (No.)

Now, my perspective on this might be a little skewed because I was also getting federal civics at home. My mom was a legal secretary and a con law fangirl. I've theorized that my mother, a wholly secularized Jew, had an atavistic impulse to obsess over a text and hot swapped the Bill of Rights for the Torah. I'm not suggesting that this resulted in my being well educated about the Constitution, only that while I couldn't give two farts for what my mother thinks about most things about me, every time I have to look up which amendment is which I feel faintly guilty like I am disappointing someone.

Upon further discussion with Mr Bostoniensis, it emerged that another source of his education in American governance was in the Boy Scouts, which he left in junior high. I went and looked up the present Boy Scouts offerings for civics and found that for 4th grade Webelos (proto Boy Scouts) it falls under the "My Community Adventure" ("You’ll learn about the different types of voting and how our national government maintains the balance of power.") For full Boy Scouts (ages 11 and up), there is a merit badge "Citizenship in the Nation" which is just straight up studying the Constitution. ("[...] List the three branches of the United States government. Explain: (a) The function of each branch of government, (b) Why it is important to divide powers among different branches, (c) How each branch "checks" and "balances" the others, (d) How citizens can be involved in each branch of government. [...]")

Meanwhile, I discovered this: Schoolhouse Rock's "Three-Ring Government". I, like most people my age, learned all sorts of crucial parts of American governance like the Preamble of the Constitution and How a Bill Becomes a Law through watching Schoolhouse Rock's public service edutainment interstitials on Saturday morning between the cartoons, but apparently this one managed to entirely miss me. (Wikipedia informs me "'Three Ring Government' had its airdate pushed back due to ABC fearing that the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S. Government, and Congress would object to having their functions and responsibilities being compared to a circus and threaten the network's broadcast license renewal.[citation needed]") These videos were absolutely aimed at elementary-aged school children, and interestingly "Three Ring Government" starts with the implication ("Guess I got the idea right here in school//felt like a fool, when they called my name// talking about the government and how it's arranged") that this is something a young kid in school would be expected to know.

So I am interested in the questions of "what age/grade do people think is when these ideas are, or should be, taught?" and "what age/grade are they actually taught, where?"

Because where I'm from this isn't "12th grade government", it's second grade government, and I am not close to being done with being scandalized over the fact apparently large swaths of the US are wrong about this.

My question for you, o readers, is where and when and how you learned the basic principles of how your form of government is organized. For those of you educated in the US, I mean the real basics:

• Congress passes the laws;
• The President enforces and executes the laws;
• The Supreme Court reviews the laws and cancels them if they violate the Constitution.
Extra credit:
• The President gets a veto over the laws passed by Congress.
• Congress can override presidential vetoes.
• Money is allocated by laws, so Congress does it.

Nothing any deeper than that. For those of you not educated in the US, I'm not sure what the equivalent is for your local government, but feel free to make a stab at it.

So please comment with two things:

1) When along your schooling (i.e. your grade or age) were these basics (or local equivalent) about federal government covered (which might be multiple times and/or places), and what state (or state equivalent) you were in at the time?

2) What non-school education you got on this, at what age(s), and where you were?

[...]

A hurry of hoofs in a village-street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet:
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders, that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.

It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river-fog,
That rises when the sun goes down.

It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.

It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.

You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard-wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

[...] A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

I excerpted as I did so the reader could encounter it with fresh eyes.

While there are enough inaccuracies in the poem – written almost a hundred years after the fact – to render it more fancy than fact, this did actually happen.

Two hundred and fifty years ago. Tonight.