 Good morning. We are happy to have you here. Welcome to the Consource Constitution Day celebration with David McCullough at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. I'm Elisha Tucker, the Director of Education and Volunteers for the Constitutional Sources Project, which has created Consource, the first free and fully indexed online library of constitutional sources. We're able to, we have the great pleasure of hosting Mr. McCullough through the generous sponsorship of Thinkfinity, Verizon's free online database of teacher resources. Our mission is to increase knowledge, facilitate research, and facilitate research and encourage discussion of the U.S. Constitution. The letters, speeches, and journals of the constitutional framers and amenders are kept in hundreds of libraries and archives, as well as private collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. This limits access to most of the documents and historical resources that we, the people, can access for historical research. So we are digitizing them and putting them online for free for anyone who has internet access. Currently, the library holds almost 20,000 documents and eventually it will hold constitutional primary source material from antiquity to 1992. The library also holds lesson plans for teachers from grades 5 to 12 and also lessons developed in partnership with the United States Military Academy at West Point. As students learn history through document analysis, they develop strong thinking habits by forming questions, evaluating sources, seeking to weigh evidence before drawing conclusions and much, much more. We are very pleased to have Mr. McCullough teach us how in a heroic joint effort and in the midst of crisis, the extraordinary founders of our nations arrive to the words that we live by. Today we celebrate the signing of the Constitution on the final day of convention. Mr. McCullough is the teacher, the Constitution is the topic, and documents housed on consorts will be our textbook. We're very glad to have you. Now I'd like to introduce Leanne Potter who is, who leads the archives efforts in teaching young people with documents. She's the director of education and volunteers with the Center for the National Archives Experience. Good morning. We're so happy that you're here at the National Archives. How many of you have been here before? Well, hopefully after today, lots of hands will go up because you'll come again and again and again. You'll like it so much. It is really my pleasure on behalf of the National Archives to welcome you and it is also my pleasure to tell you just a little bit about the National Archives. This is a very special week here because on Saturday we'll be celebrating the 224th anniversary of the signing of our Constitution. Hopefully while you're here today you will have an opportunity to go upstairs and see that very document. Along with the Constitution the National Archives holds billions of records of our federal government that help us better understand how our government works and the role that we play to help make it work. It is my pleasure this morning to introduce to you a new colleague of mine. His name is Dr. James Gardner. Go ahead and stand up, Jim. And I have to read this because it's a new title and it's really long. Jim is the executive for legislative archives, presidential libraries and museum services at the National Archives. Prior to coming to the archives he was at the Smithsonian American History Museum and before that with the American Historical Association and his many professional activities and his many publications are evidence of Jim's commitment to the power that primary sources, whether they be documents or whether they be artifacts have in helping all of us learn more about our collective history. Dr. Jim Gardner. Thank you, Leigh Ann. Good morning and welcome to the William G. McGowan Theatre of the National Archives. It's my pleasure today to have with us special guests in our audience. We have classes from both the United States Military Academy at West Point which is one of our affiliated archives and from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf here in Washington. Welcome to you and to all of you. A speaker here this morning is no stranger to this stage or to the National Archives or indeed to anyone interested in history. He is one of the archives most distinguished users of records and one of our strongest champions in the history community and the general public. He really needs no introduction but let me give it a try anyway. David McCullough is one of the nation's most honored and esteemed historians of our time and for good reason. His narratives and history are not only grounded in exemplary scholarship but also imminently readable, informative, interesting and entertaining. Mr. McCullough was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and graduated with a degree in English from Yale University. There he had the good fortune to be taught by and influenced by the playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Over the years he has used his great storytelling skills to describe the impact of the Johnstown flood, the building of the Panama Canal and the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. He has written biographies of three presidents, John Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman and won Pulitzer prizes for two of them. His book 1776 about the year our nation was founded was the number one bestseller and one of the most popular histories in recent years. Today there are more than 9 million copies of his books in print. His latest book The Greater Journey Americans in Paris explores the world of writers, artists, politicians and others who went to Paris in the 19th century and how their experiences there influenced their later work. Mr. McCullough's works and the author himself frequently grace American television. His Truman biography became a television movie and his Adams biography became the multi Emmy award winning series John Adams. We have heard his voice many times, especially behind Ken Burns' Emmy award winning series, The Civil War and the American Experience series. In addition to the two Pulitzer prizes and numerous book awards, our guest has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award the nation can bestow on a civilian, as well as in New York Public Library's literary lion award. He has also received the Records of Achievement award from the foundation for the National Archives. Now please join me in welcoming to the National Archives once again David McCullough. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Gardner and good morning all. I feel honored and pleased, very pleased to be included in this program. And I hope that what I have to say today will be of interest and help but also I hope it will cause you to think some more about various aspects of history and particularly the history surrounding our Constitution that might not have passed your mind before. I am often asked understandably by people who are interested in my kind of work and how it's done how much of my time I spend doing research and how much of my time I spend writing. Good question. Seldom ever am I asked how much of my time do I spend thinking? And that is the part of it which is often the most important. And it's essential that when we read history, try to understand the protagonists of times past, that we not just absorb what's there but we ask questions. I don't think that enough of education takes into consideration the need for students to ask questions. Students are so often required to answer questions but Seldom encouraged to ask questions and asking questions literally with other people or while you're reading something is very often the best way to learn. And that said, I will now offer a preamble to my remarks today about history. Now the lessons of history are manifold. They're beyond counting and they keep developing. There's never an end to the lessons of history. And one of the lessons of history is that nothing happened in the past. No one lived in the past. They lived in the present. It was their present not ours. Very, very important because they don't know how things are going to come out any more than we know how things are going to come out. Washington, Franklin, James Madison, Hamilton, they didn't walk around and say isn't this fascinating living in the past? Aren't we peculiar? Aren't we picturesque in our funny clothes? They are living in the moment just exactly the way we are. And they are imperfect human beings. That's redundant. We human beings are imperfect. And history is human. It's about people. We, the people, the Constitution begins. When in the course of human events, Jefferson's opening line to the Declaration of Independence tells us, essential to it. That's why it's so compelling. That's why history is so infinitely interesting and why it's so important. It's not just important because it can make you a better citizen. It will do that. And it's not just important because it'll introduce you to a world of law and the establishment of culture and structure to society. It's interesting because it's about how we behave. It's about the mystery of human personality and the mystery of time. We're talking today about a document that's old by our standards, but not old as history goes. Our country is not old as history goes. There are cathedrals in France and elsewhere in Europe that were built and still stand and still evoke responses from everyone who comes there that were built before Columbus ever said sale. We are a new society, a new event in history, as old as some of it may seem from our point of view. Now another lesson of history, excuse me, is that some people have the capacity to see adversity as opportunity. Adversity is often extremely difficult and sometimes tragic and sometimes heartbreaking. But adversity can also be an opportunity to change things, to improve, to pioneer, to build. And then there's the very real and very pertinent lesson of history concerning this subject of this morning. And that is that America is a combined effort. Very little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. Very little of consequence is ever accomplished alone. One person may get a lot of credit or all the credit, but never is it just one person. And this combined effort, many heads and many hands, as James Madison said, is the reason why the Constitution happened and the reason why our country happened. The Revolutionary War was a combined effort. All that preceded the Revolutionary War. And the Revolutionary War, please understand, did not begin with a declaration of independence. It began long before that. And these steps along the way, which seemed like the gateways to so much, were not necessarily seen as such at that time. Now in the summer of 1787, really the spring, summer and fall, our country was in very bad shape. It was a time of turbulence, time of uncertainty, time of worry, suffering. People were in debt, seriously in debt, crops had failed in many parts of the country. There was deep fear and deep unrest. One of the most notable examples of that was Western Massachusetts, which gave rise to what was known as the Shea's Rebellion, which was a serious event. Thousands of farmers descending on a city of Springfield, the armory there to try and get the weapons, being stopped by a military force, Americans against Americans. In the winter of 1787, marching through the blizzards. Now it didn't come to an awful lot in the way of bloodshed and destruction, but it set a tremor of fear and tremor of uncertainty, worry through the whole country. The problem was the federal government wasn't very strong. There really wasn't a federal government. We had the Articles of Confederation. We had no chief executive, for example. The Revolutionary War was fought without a president. The president was the Commander-in-Chief, if you will, George Washington. So you could see George Washington is not just having been President of the United States for eight years, two terms as President, but having served more than eight years as Commander-in-Chief. So in all, he was really the figurehead, the leader of our country for 16 years. And if he had not attended the Constitutional Convention, the Constitutional Convention might not have succeeded. His presence, his gravitas, his importance, his integrity were essential. Now, it's a great cast of characters who met there in Philadelphia in 1787. And five of them are worth noting. Many of them are worth noting, but James Madison, who probably worked harder, very quiet, small man, poor health, very intelligent and very dedicated. Alexander Hamilton from New York, who was a spectacular talker, a stimulating prodigy of a mind, charming, charismatic. Ben Franklin, the wise old man of the scene, of the play, if you will, who doesn't say an awful lot during this session, but whose presence, like Washington's, is immensely important. Governor Morris, who was tall, handsome, talked more than anybody from Pennsylvania, another very important figure. They're meeting in Philadelphia in secret, in the same room where the Declaration of Independence was worked out and signed. Many of you, I hope, have been there. You've seen it. It's not a very large room. It's not a vast, impressive gathering place. And its importance to our story as a country, to who we are and what we stand for, could not be greater. Imagine these two immensely important documents, both of which are, of course, here, where we are now, were created there. One of the historians has said that the Constitution is our crowning work, was the crowning work of the American Revolution. It was indeed, but keep in mind, it's not a crown of gold and jewels. It's a crown of words on paper. Words matter. What we say, what we profess to believe, as expressed in words, matter. Not just at the moment, but possibly for a very long time to come. The pen is a sword. The pen can be a weapon, but the pen can also be a magic wand. And when you think of what these relatively few people did, in very little time, three months, meeting in that room with the windows closed because they don't want word to get out, sentries at the windows to keep people from coming up and listening, in that heat of Philadelphia and humidity in December, this is punishment. But they're working in secret not to keep anybody from knowing, but keep the politicians and the ambitious statesmen, if you will, if you prefer, who are in that room from grandstanding. From saying things for effect, for saying things for popularity or to make an impression back home, not their business. Their business is to hammer out a document that will stand the test of time. And that was asking a great deal of those people. Three months away from home, three months away from their work, three months, a very hard concentrated effort under difficult circumstances, calling upon their patriotism, not the flag waving patriotism, chest beating kind, but the kind of getting down to do serious, difficult work in a very serious, worrisome time. Not unlike the time we are involved with ourselves today. There's a lot of similarity. But those people saw this as our chance to do it right. We're going to do it, let's do it right. What they worked out, as I hope all of you know, is the basic structure of our government. And that's easy to say, and it's easy to say, oh, yes, I know that. The bicameral legislature, the chief executive, and the judiciary. What they were really working out is a national government. A national government with power. Which is the very issue that troubles so many people today. So is all of this relevant to the world we live in? Certainly is, every day. Should you understand it? Should you think about it? Absolutely, all the time. We can never know enough about the founding fathers as they've come to be known. Never know enough. And we're learning more all the time. It isn't an old story that's been just talked to death. And it is again infinitely compelling because of its human frailties and human soaring. One of the mistakes people make very often is that they read about a success. An accomplishment that improves an old problem. That dispenses with what was inadequate before. And they think it was a perfect job, therefore. And that what was there before was inadequate and a failure. Now there is a great deal to be said for that point of view. But it's almost always not quite complete. The Articles of Confederation were weak. They didn't have an executive to run the country. The taxing power wasn't there. The power to control diplomatic negotiations for the whole country wasn't there. On and on. But the Articles of Confederation as weak as it was got us through eight and a half years of the Revolutionary War. The longest war in our history except for Vietnam. The most bloody war in our history on a per capita basis except for the Civil War. People forget that. And just because they wore funny clothes and walked around with wigs on and so forth doesn't mean that they weren't human beings suffering all the horrors of war. It isn't just a number of people who are killed. It's all the people who have been wounded and stricken with disease and taken away from their families for years at a time on terrible food and no pay. All somehow or other the Articles of Confederation and that government that was in Philadelphia managed to do it. Also ironically the same summer, this tumultuous troubled summer of 1787 under the Articles of Confederation was passed the Northwest Ordinance. Think about this. This is what I say when we got to think. The Northwest Ordinance created a new part of the country for the future's development. Five states would result from it. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. A territory bigger than the entire nation of France. Center of the Great Lakes. One of the most valuable, most American places on the map. And they specified there would be no slavery. Before we even had a Constitution. No slavery in those states. And that there would be public education. Neither of which would wind up in the Constitution. So they were ahead of the Constitution in that respect. So to just dismiss the Articles of Confederation as having been largely a failure is to not understand what really happened. The fact that there was no slavery in those states would change our whole history. And of course it was admirable in the extreme. The fact that they saw that education was essential to our whole system, to its success. And did something about it. Didn't just talk about it. Jefferson said any nation expects to be ignorant and free, expects what never was and never will be. But there's nothing in the Constitution about that. The other point I want to make is that the Constitution isn't a success entirely. Martin Luther King put it very well in his famous speech here on the Mall. That it was a promissory note because it ducked, it avoided the issue of slavery. The issue with the ultimate lead into the worst calamity in the history of our country, the Civil War. 600,000 people died because of slavery in that war. 600,000 people. And that's not counting all the people that went home with one arm or no legs. We are accountable for what we do. History shows that. And we are capable of rising up out of terrible troubled times. And doing something, something thrilling that is a symbol of affirmation. And the Constitution is that. Even before the amendments were added, the Bill of Rights. Even before the 14th Amendment was finally added, ending slavery. We keep fixing it. Now whether the Constitution should be taken literally or should be judged by the temper and the problems of the moment, by the jurists, is continuing issue. The great effort was to find a middle way. That's what they were struggling for in that hot room with the windows closed. To find the middle way together. And they succeeded in doing it. And they might not have gone that way. That's the other thing. History is never on a track. We're often taught this followed this followed that followed that. Got to memorize it will be on the test on Wednesday. And therefore it had to come out that way. It never had to come out any one way or another. And what they achieved at Philadelphia was like nothing else that had ever been achieved. Words on paper. A Constitution on paper. A written Constitution. Still, still the law of the land. Still part of who we are. And what we believe. There are only five, I believe, colleges or universities or institutions of higher learning in our country that require their students to take at least one term on the Constitution. Three of them are military academies. Now if you say to someone, do you think it's a good idea that officers in the military should know the Constitution? Oh yes, they certainly should. What about all the rest of us? What about all of us? Not just incoming people from elsewhere in the world applying to become citizens have to take a very good, serious test in American history. We all should. It's part of our job. It's part of being a citizen. And it's infinitely interesting. I think that everybody should go to Philadelphia at some point in the course of life and go into that room and think about what was done there. Think about those human beings and their frailties. Some of them got in a lot of trouble later on personally or professionally. Some of them peaked as we would say then. But while they were there, they were using the best ability they had. They were thinking. They were trying to put what they felt and believed on paper in words. This wasn't a sound bite opportunity to be practiced by sound bite brains. These were serious people. Now most of them, over half of them were under 40 years old. Don't think of these wise old founding fathers. Some of them were like Franklin. Most of them were quite young. But they had had the experience of the war which did not make them anything but versed, steeped in the realities of tragedy and accomplishment and courage and faith. Look at the First Amendment alone, for example. What would we be without that? Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. What does that mean? It means freedom of expression. Freedom to use your mind. Freedom to have ideas. One historian has called history the inexhaustible storehouse of ideas. Think of it as that. Don't think of history as memorizing dates or quotations from great pronouncements. You can look those things up in a book. Think of it as an adventure. Think of it as a human unfolding human story of infinite interest in which more happens that is unbelievable than happens in most works of fiction. The truth is often much stranger than fiction and more illuminating. And fortunately, a great deal of it has been superbly written down the ages. One of the reasons I am so strong a backer of this consort's program is this very idea of making the written word, the literature of democracy, available as far and as easily as possible for everybody. And why I think it is so important that gatherings of this kind are put together not just for students but for teachers. Those people are all teaching us something and they are asking us to get to know them better and to get to know what they went through to achieve what they did in difficult times. We just celebrated the 10th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and on the Pentagon here. And I remember vividly I was here when it happened. People on television and elsewhere in the press saying this is the darkest, most difficult time we've ever been through. Well, it is indeed a very dark and very difficult time, but we have been through worse. And one of the values of history is that it keeps, it makes it possible, helps you to keep the dark times in proportion. Other people have faced as difficult or worse and looked what they did. That should be an inspiration. The story of the writing of the Constitution of our country should be an inspiration to us. Now it is very important that we know what they wrote. But I want to stress one more thing. It's very important that we know also what they read because we are what we read. What were Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson? What were they reading when they were students? What were they reading through life? From which writers, which words were they taking inspiration? One of them we know was Alexander Pope, the great English poet, and his, his, uh, elegy of man. Act well your part, there all the honor lies. They all knew it. They all quoted it. What's that mean? Act well your part. History, luck, fate, God, choose about how you wish to say it, has cast you in a role. Play it the best you can. Why? For money? No. For power? No. Celebrity? No. Honor. We don't hear much about honor these days. Act well your part, there all the honor lies. Now that doesn't mean they always were able to do that, but they were striving for that objective. And if you understand that, you can understand who they were and why they were the way they were a great deal more, more succinctly. In, um, 1779, a full eight years before the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Massachusetts passed its Constitution. And the Constitution of Massachusetts was not just a harbinger or a preview of what was to come in the National Constitution. It was a model. Everything has its antecedents. Everything has some hint, some forecast in previous time. And in this Massachusetts Constitution is a clause, a paragraph, written by John Adams. John Adams was not in Philadelphia nor was Jefferson, as I'm sure you know, because they were serving as diplomats in Europe. But they were reacting to it. They were keenly interested in all the latest news. When the word came through that had finally been passed, Adams wrote immediately to say, it's marvelous, it's tremendous accomplishment, but it needs a bill of rights. Jefferson did not say much about needing a bill of rights for quite some time, but eventually came around seeing it that way. But the paragraph that Adams wrote for the Massachusetts Constitution is the note I would like to conclude my remarks to you this morning. Nothing like this had ever been written for a Constitution ever anywhere in the history of the world and how wonderful had it been in our Constitution. But it expresses exactly the spirit in which we are all gathered here today and the spirit in which this whole effort by concourse is imbued. When he wrote it he was sure that it would be rejected, but he just had to do it, ease his own mind. It was passed unanimously and is still part of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffuse generally among the body of the people is necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties. And as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in various parts of the country and among the different orders of people, in other words everybody, it shall be the duty, the duty of legislators and magistrates in all future periods of this Commonwealth to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences. In all the public schools and grammar schools, for the promotion of agriculture, now listen to this list, it includes everything virtually. For the promotion of agriculture, arts, sciences, commerce, trades, manufacturers and a natural history of the country. To countenance and inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality in their dealings, sincerity, good humor, there shall be good humor and all social affections and generous sentiments among the people. Who could write anything like that today and get it passed? His faith in education was that as the bulwark of society. When he was a young man, he wrote the following. John Adams was a farmer's son. John Adams was the only founding father who never owned a slave as a matter of principle. He was 25 years old when he wrote in his little diary, I must judge for myself. But how can I judge? How can anyone judge unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading? And on that I closed my remarks and thank you very much. I would be happy to hear and maybe even answer some questions for a few minutes if you have any. Somebody over here? Would you speak briefly about partisanship? It seems to me like everyone thinks it's brand new, but it certainly exists at the Constitutional Convention. Can you speak for a few minutes? Partisanship, there's nothing new about partisanship. There's nothing new about enmity and hard feelings and betrayal, magnifying. It all has gone on from the start. There was a scene in the first Congress after the Constitution was passed. The President was in office where the members of Congress in the spirit of differences of opinion went out each other with fire toms. It was rough. And that's why the struggle to find the middle way sensibly is always, always the most essential ingredient for competent and responsible legislation and decision making. Partisanship is healthy. We want to have differences of opinion. But we don't want to do it to the extent where we have no patience with or recognition of value in our opponent. And alas, that spirit, which is so admirable and so needed, has been eroding rapidly in our Congress and in our politics for about 10 years now. The cause is a matter of debate. I think it has a lot to do with television and the way politics are reported and discussed, as if it were all some sort of game, some sort of sports event, who's up, who's down, who's out, who's no good, who's winning, who's going to win. It can't be seen like that. It's our survival. It's our structure. It is the very web, if you will, or fiber of our society. And it wasn't all handed down to us by gods. We have, as being permanent, we have to take care of it all the time. We have been entrusted with this gem and we have to do it right and in good spirit. And it shouldn't have to take an attack on us by an outside force to bring us together when a job needs to be done. Again and again and again we have gotten through these periods because of the good will that does prevail in the long run and we have achieved what needed to be achieved. But that requires not just the involvement of politicians but the people who put the politicians in office, meaning all of us. Hello, my name is Shelby Locke. I'm a senior at West Springfield High School. This past June I attended Virginia Girls State at Longwood University and ran for the office of governor. And during a question and answer debate session, a question was asked about whether the Constitution's ideas were too outdated for our modern society. What is your take on this? No, they are not in the slightest bit outdated. I do believe that the judiciary and those who have issues to take up concerning constitutional questions should do so and judge according to what the particular needs of the moment might be. But the Constitution applies every single day. And more often than not the Constitution is still exactly as it should be. There are two issues this morning. This morning's New York Times. Whether this surveillance that's going on is an invasion of privacy and violation of the Constitution and whether keeping people in prison an excessive length of time for crimes that were not necessarily excessive is a violation of the Constitution. These issues are before us all the time and should be considered. And thank God we have a charter of rules, if you will, a charter of fundamental beliefs that we are required to refer to. No, the Constitution stays. The Constitution is our foundation. It's our foundation. Hi, Mr. McCullough. What may have inspired you to become an historian? I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you, but... What have inspired you to become a historian and author? What caused me or inspired me to become an author? Yes. Historian? Yes. I've been interested in history since I was in school, in grade school. I grew up in Pennsylvania in a part of Pennsylvania where there was lots of history all around me. My parents and grandparents talked about the old days in Pittsburgh at the dinner table and I was fascinated by it. And later on, after I finished college, I was swept up by the call of President Kennedy to serve the country. Asked not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for a country. I put very much to heart and I quit my job working for magazines in New York and came down to work for the government here. And I was the editor of a magazine for the Arab world. Al-Hayat Fee America published here and edited here in Washington and published in Beirut in Arabic all over the Near East. And we had a very small staff and so I wound up having to do an awful lot of the work myself over the weekends. And one of the needs was to find photographic material to illustrate a number of different articles that was inexpensive and so I would go up to the Library of Congress to find photographs, great historic photographs, material of all kinds that was in the public domain, in other words, weren't charged to be to publish it. And one day, one Saturday, my wife was with me helping me. We happened to find a collection of photographs taken in Johnstown, Pennsylvania after the famous 1889 Johnstown flood. And I had grown up hearing about the flood much of my life. But I really had no idea the terrible destruction, violence and chaos caused as seen in those, revealed in those photographs. And so I thought I'd like to know more about it. So I took a book out of the library and it wasn't very good. And so I took another book out of the library and it was even less satisfactory. And as was mentioned by Mr. Gardner in his introduction, I had known the great playwright Thornton Wilder when I was in college and he was once asked how he got the ideas for his plays or his novels. And he said, I imagine a story and I check around and a story that I'd like to see performed on the stage or the story that I'd like to read about in the book and I check around and if I find that nobody's written it, I write it so I can read it in the book or so I can see it performed on stage. So I said to myself, why don't you try to write the book about the Johnstown flood that you wished you could read. And that got me going. I'd never done historical research before. I'd never dug into the National Archives or the Library of Congress before. But as soon as I started doing it, I knew this is what I want to do with the rest of my life. And I never bothered to let the fact that I had no PhD, that I wasn't a history major. I didn't let that stand in the way. I wanted to do it. I could be called an amateur historian in the true meaning of the word amateur. You do it because you love it. I want to finish now and I just want to make one final observation. Yes, sir. Sir, this might take a while so you can be brief if that's fine with you, sir. But my question is with regard to education. Sir, you talked about how the founding fathers had a big emphasis on education and how when they were doing the Constitutional Convention, that they believed that you should go and educate people with civic virtue and basically focus on educating the people in the United States. I'm wondering if you believe that the founding fathers believed that education in the United States and thus the people in the United States would evolve to the point at which checks against the people could be taken off such as the 17th Amendment which allows for the direct election of senators. Did they allow for the point where education would do what? If education and the people in the United States would evolve to the point at which the people in the United States could go and directly elect senators and basically have more and more input in the government. I don't think they would have, they might have. I don't think they saw any adverse effect of increased education ever. To me, one of the most wonderful little human touches of the whole story of the Constitutional Convention that summer is when it was all over, George Washington, before he left Philadelphia went and bought a copy of Cervantes Don Quixote. George Washington stopped going to school when he was about 14. He never had a higher education, but he never stopped reading. They wanted to learn, they craved learning. They were hungry for learning, all of them. Imagine Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in their retirement years from the White House corresponding about the proper pronunciation of certain Greek words and phrases. Don't have too many former presidents doing that much anymore. These were highly educated, erudite, learned, well-read people in everything, polymath. Don't know that word, that was what they were interested in everything. And let me just say to any of you, if you have a teacher or a well-meaning parent who says you're good in math, you stick with math and science. You're good in English, you stick with English and history. Fine, up to a point. It's all interesting. And you never know how life is going to take you in different directions where you suddenly want to know more about science than you ever did before. Or when you get to a point in your education where you take a course that's supposedly going to be difficult and tedious and maybe extremely boring because in science and you walk into that classroom and suddenly there's a teacher who just throws open the window and makes it come alive. You never know. You never know what you're going to need to know. You never know how your own curiosity. Remember, curiosity is what distinguishes us from the cabbages. And it's accelerative, like gravity. The more you know, the more you want to know. That's the wonder of it. I want to close by just saying this. I don't think there are any more important people in our society than our teachers. I think our teachers are doing the work that counts the most and will count the most in the long run. And one of my favorite teachers, dear friend, one of the best teachers I know of American history from this part of our country, Jim Prokoko, is here today. I want to acknowledge a great teacher. Where are you, Jim? There you are. Jim is a man of ideas, originality, imagination. He decided he would start a program where he took students around to the statues that are in Washington, everywhere, and make those statues come alive. Who were they? What did they do? Why are they important? Why should you know about them? And getting students to write papers about it. It's a terrific program. And talk about making your life count for something. Those of you who aspire to be teachers, keep your eye on that path. That's a great one to go by. And good luck to all of you. Please join me in thanking Mr. McCullough one more time. We will keep with our schedule for the Boeing Learning Center. So the students from the Model Secondary School would be at 11.30. And we have somebody to guide you to the Learning Center. And then the high school students would be from 12 to a 1. And then the middle school students would be from 1 to 2. And if you aren't able to stay, please let me know. And I will be able to talk to the Boeing Learning Center about that. And Mr. McCullough said that he is willing to stay after and meet some of the students if they're interested in meeting him. So thank you very much for coming.