A program that captures the imagination of the nations best high school teachers will also inspire their best students. Hence the Ashbrook Center modeled a new program for high school students on its Presidential Academy for teachers of American history and government (begun in 2006). This past summer a Congressional Academy for American History and Civics brought one hundred rising seniors from high schools across the nation to Washington, DC for two weeks of intensive study.

Ashbrooks Congressional and Presidential Academies are the result of the American History and Civics Education Act of 2004, originally introduced in the United States Senate by Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander. Under the program, the U.S. Department of Education awards grants to institutions who offer programs helping high school teachers and students develop a broader and deeper understanding of these subject matters.

The course was designed to help students "dig more deeply into the big questions of American history" than they had been able to do in regular high school classes, said Ashland University Associate Professor Jeffrey Sikkenga, Director of the Academy. Students read primary and secondary documents in American history, listened to lectures by university-level faculty, discussed questions in small seminar groups, and made visits to historical sites in the Washington area.

Called "Telling America's Story: A Congressional Academy on the Founding, Development, and Future of American Self-Government," the course focused on three turning points in American history and emphasized three primary documents that epitomize those pivotal moments. The course first addressed the Revolution, initiated by the Declaration of Independence, which set forth principles on which the new nation would be founded. Next, students turned to the Civil War, which tested the nations founding principles, as eloquently summarized in the Gettysburg Address. Third, students looked at the Civil Rights movement, which challenged the nation to fulfill its founding principles, a movement forcefully articulated in Kings "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

Suggesting the hunger of bright students across the country for an approach to American history that explored its great themes, one student referred to an academic ritual endured by many college-bound high school students in May of their junior years. "There was a general consensus at the Academy that we should have had this class before taking the AP U.S. History exam," said Nathan Rehr, a participant from Baltimore, MD. The course structure helped students grasp "overarching concepts of history as opposed to just learning facts."

What struck participants the most, Sikkenga noted, was the realization that "American history at the highest level is a kind of conversation among great thinkers and political actors across centuries. You have to understand the Civil War in the light of the American founding," he noted, just as you must recognize the Civil Rights movement as a continuation of the pursuit begun in the Declaration of 1776.

Visits to historical sites magnified the impact of the course. Given that the program stressed above all the importance of reading "the foundational documents of American history," the first trip the students made was to the National Archives. Later, they visited what Ashley Hawley, a student from Washington state, called "rooms where some of the greatest decisions in American history were made." Hawley and Rehr spoke of the "exhilarating" experience of "standing in the signing room of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in Philadelphia."

Another student said that trips to historical sites made the history "easier to grasp," often raising "a number of questions for myself and my peers which we would then be able to discuss." Sikkenga cited a visit that illustrates the point. Seeing George Washingtons stately home by the Potomac home helped students understand that Americans could trust Washington to be their first president "because he loved Mount Vernon" and would want to leave office and return there.

No less valuable was the opportunity for students to meet others from around the country with "a similar passionate interest in American history and politics," said Sikkenga. Participants spoke appreciatively of what they learned from other students, who displayed a wide variety of experience of the world. Among them was a student of Middle Eastern heritage who had spent ten years living in Australia and another student who was making her very first trip outside the state of Maine. A large percentage of them came from ordinary or even under-performing public schools, Sikkenga emphasized.

A careful selection process, undertaken with the help of a panel of high school teachers organized by the Ashbrook Center, brought together those young people most eager to take a serious look at the American story. "We had incredible students," said Ashland Assistant Professor Chris Burkett, one of the faculty. "They came prepared to challenge the professors and challenge the readings."

Burkett and Sikkenga spoke of the ways students showed their eagerness to network and learn about each other. By the middle of the first week they had begun organizing a talent show (video excerpts of which can be found on YouTube) and set up a Facebook group chatroom where today they are still discussing current American politics. Finding the students highly curious about college, the faculty added an evening session at which students asked a range of questions, from the practical to the philosophical, about selecting schools and making the most of the university experience.

"Everything was well organized and well run, the faculty were passionate and dedicated, the material was well prepared, the lectures and discussions were superb, the trips were engaging, and even the food was good," Barb Wolkowski, a student from Nebraska, said of the program. "Years from now, I know that I will still be able to look back upon the Congressional Academy as a program which has shaped my life. I have come away more confident in my understanding of American history and more empowered to continue my education."

For more information on the Presidential and Congressional Academies, visit PresidentialAcademy.org and CongressionalAcademy.org.