The Concord Review’s Bob Nasson on Students’ History Essays & Excellence

The Learning Curve Bob Nasson

Albert Cheng: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Learning Curve podcast. I’m one of your co-hosts, Albert Cheng, joined by Alisha Searcy. What’s up, Alisha?

Alisha Searcy: Hey, Albert. How’s it going?

Albert Cheng: Going all right. Summer is … I mean, can you believe it? It’s gonna be August.

Alisha Searcy: And, you know, in Georgia we start school, I think, pretty early.

I grew up in Florida where we didn’t start until September. School starts for a lot of systems next week, if you can believe that.

Albert Cheng: Next week. Yes. Oh, man. Wow. Well, change and seasons. Isn’t that a fact of life?

Alisha Searcy: Yes. And growth.

Albert Cheng: And growth, [00:01:00] right. Speaking of school starting, we’ve got a really fascinating guest today, Bob Nasson, who, if you don’t know, is the editor of the Concord Review.

And I say speaking of schools, because this is a journal that publishes essays by high school students. And so I’m really looking forward to learning about this. Sounds like a really cool publication. I mean, look, I spent a lot of time reading journals myself. But this one, I think, is unique.

Alisha Searcy: I’m looking forward to it And I feel like today is a day about students, so that’s gonna be fun.

Albert Cheng: Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of which, actually, Alisha, let’s talk news because I think your story is about students. What’d you find?

Alisha Searcy: It is. Found this in The 74, “Students Convene to Hammer Out AI Bill of Rights for Schools.” And I thought it was quite interesting. As our listeners know, I run the Center for Strong Public Schools.

It’s a national organization, and we do advocacy work, and I’ve been really interested in the conversations around AI. I don’t like [00:02:00] the technology ban conversations. I really think we should look at embracing technology, and certainly AI is one of those things. And so how interesting it is that more than 100 high school students, according to this article, two from every state, came together in Boston to create essentially a bill of rights for AI for students.

It was sponsored by Day of AI, MIT’s Raise Initiative, and the National Superintendents Association. And so the students were surveyed, they debated, they amended proposals and voted in a process modeled after the United States Senate. So I know those of us who love civic engagement and civic education programs would love how this was laid out.

Very impressive process that the students were treated like policymakers, not just students. And they really wrestled with difficult trade-offs instead of just giving simple yes or no answers about AI. And they were well-represented, you know, across perspectives in terms of suburban, urban, rural communities [00:03:00] across the country.

And what I love and is so very powerful is, as a former youth leader myself, they really came to understand that adults don’t have all the answers when it comes to this in particular, and they are the ones who are really experiencing what it means to have AI in school. And so they talked about their concerns, you know, cheating within AI, the bias that it may have, misinformation that it provides, concerns around privacy, what environmental impacts it could have.

How does it affect their mental health? The specific recommendations or what they voted on has not been released yet, and apparently The 74 didn’t like that very much because they were locked out of the process, which is very interesting. But I’m excited about what they find. As I said, I think that instead of talking about AI as a future, it really is the now.

We know that students are using it in a number of different ways, and so the question I have is: how do we use AI [00:04:00] in a way that enhances education, that, of course, does not strip down critical thinking, it doesn’t become a crutch, which I certainly think it can for adults and students, and how does it need to be designed?

What does it look like in our schools? So I think this is really powerful to have students at the forefront of this, and I’m super excited to see what they come up with.

Albert Cheng: No, that sounds exciting. I’m curious about what they ended up with, and it’s fascinating to see them model the, their procedures and process after what we’ve done you know, historically in making policy.

I mean, look, we celebrated July 4th a few weeks ago, and I think about the First Continental Congress. The Bill of Rights was a big deal there, and you asked some really great questions about AI. But hey, you know, I think the last thing I’ll say about this is it’s encouraging for me to see students take the initiative and have the opportunity for leadership.

Sometimes I think we, we maybe do too much for students, and don’t give them a chance to become [00:05:00] capable individuals, and sounds like this was an opportunity for students to do just that. So thanks for sharing that, Alisha.

Alisha Searcy: Sure thing.

Albert Cheng: Well, Alisha, real quick, I just want to flag an article written by Carrie Ingram that got picked up by Real Clear Education.

We had Carrie on, it’s been a couple months ago, I think, on this show, but her piece is about Wyoming. The short of it is maybe we need to pay attention to Wyoming because their governor and their legislature just enacted a whole series of reforms from choice to accountability to teacher professional development and teacher training.

We talk about the Mississippi Miracle a lot on this show, and maybe some other states doing things. I don’t know. Maybe in a few years we’ll see if we have to add Wyoming to this list of states that don’t get talked about a lot, but maybe are doing some good things. So check out that article, and let’s hope for the best.

Alisha Searcy: Yes. Good work there.

Albert Cheng: All right. Well, we want to get to our guest coming up on the other side of the break, Bob Nasson, the editor of the Concord Review, so [00:06:00] stick around

Bob Nasson is the editor of the Concord Review and the executive director of the National History Club. Since nineteen eighty-seven, the review has published more than sixteen hundred historical essays averaging nine thousand words by students in forty-seven US states and forty-seven other countries. TCR authors have gone on to many top colleges and universities, including Brown, University of Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Oxford, Pennsylvania, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale.

Bob earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wesleyan University and a certificate in entrepreneurship at Boston University. Bob, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.

Bob Nasson: Thanks for having me, Albert. I appreciate it.

Albert Cheng: Let’s start with a brief introduction to the [00:07:00] journal, like some background of the Concord Review.

So Will Fitzhugh, he was the founder of the Concord Review in 1987, and in approximately 150 issues, it has thus far published nearly 1,600 history essays averaging 9,000 words, all by students from 47 states and 47 other countries. Tell us about Will Fitzhugh and the origin story of the Concord Review.

Bob Nasson: Will started the journal, we’re coming up on 40 years, so he started it back in 1987. He was a high school history teacher, social studies teacher at a public high school, Concord-Carlisle, right outside of Boston, and he was assigning research papers, history research papers for his class. And one of the things that really sort of caught his attention as he went along is that he saw that some students would go above and beyond what was expected of them.

I think he was assigning, it was like eight to 10 pages, and they would go 12 pages or 13 or 14 [00:08:00] pages. And it sort of dawned on him, he thought to himself, he’s like, “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way for me to showcase the work of these students or other students really, ones that are going above and beyond what is being asked in the classroom of them?”

He took a sabbatical, this was in ’87, 1987, and this is where he got the idea for the Concord Review, and he launched it that fall. And he just put out a call, he sent out letters to thousands of high schools in the United States just saying really a call for papers, really. He didn’t know what he was gonna get, but that first year there was a trickle of papers that arrived, and he was able to put together, I think it was in the fall of…

or maybe it was the spring of 1988, he was able to publish the first issue. And I believe there were 10 essays at that time. But I think what he saw is like, “Hey, it’s not just students from Massachusetts who are submitting these essays, [00:09:00] it’s students from around the country.” And that was sort of the founding of it.

He said to himself, he’s like, “Well, if I can do one issue,” he’s like, “I probably can keep going forward because I haven’t put that much into it right now.” He’s like, “Once I get the ball rolling on this-” It will really start to hopefully expand. And that’s what he saw over the next few years. Obviously, it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t seamless.

He worked for a really low salary at the time, but he saw that more and more students would submit papers, and not just from the United States, sometimes from outside the United States as well too. So we just published our volume thirty-six. We just finished that this past summer, and we’re moving on to volume thirty-seven.

So we’ve been at this for the past forty years, and it’s because of Will’s dedication and his, just his belief in rewarding and publishing the best work of high school students throughout the country and around the globe as well too

Albert Cheng: I mean, that is so fascinating, and, and [00:10:00] I, I can think of all the times where I’ve written little essays in high school or, or seen other students write them, and then nothing happens to them.

But this is, this is such a fascinating outlet to feature some good work of students. So I wanna ask a general question, the next question here, about just the state of student work. I mean, look, you guys are focused exclusively on publishing high-quality student writing in history. What is the state of American students’ history essay writing today?

And could you tell us maybe a bit about your work in the National History Club? Like, what does that have to do with enhancing, I guess, the quality of, of history essay writing today?

Bob Nasson: Around the first question around the state, I would say spotty. I mean, that’s the word I would use. I think there are a variety of reasons for that.

I think a lot of schools, and I hear this directly from teachers and some students as well too, you know, a lot of schools just don’t assign. They assign papers, like you said before, a three-page paper, five-page paper, something that is less intensive. Now, there’s a variety of [00:11:00] reasons for that. You know, if you have twenty-five students in a class, like, it’s tough to ask a student, you know, all your students to do a twelve or a fifteen-page paper.

But I think one of the biggest reasons why is that a lot of schools or systems, they just- they don’t really focus on longer essays, and I think that is where I always get a little frustrated around because having done one, I did one in high school, actually. When I went to high school, I did, I think it was a ten or a twelve-page paper.

It was for AP US History my junior year, and I still say to this date to people, I’m like, “That’s the only high school assignment I remember from when I was a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior.” I don’t remember anything else. I remember that because it took me months to do, and it was a slog. It wasn’t easy to do, but I remember this immense feeling of satisfaction once I was finished because I’m like, “That was the toughest thing I had to do in high school, and now I know more about my subject than anyone else [00:12:00] too.”

And it helped me in college as well, too, because, you know, in college, and I know things have changed these days, you’re still expected in some classes to be able to do research and then, you know, deep research and then writing, really. So, you know, state is spotty, I think, and I just wish that more schools will put a focus on getting students started earlier rather than later because if you’re a student who’s only ever written a three-page paper, when you get to junior year of high school, you can’t go from three pages to twelve or fifteen pages.

Maybe you can go to five or six, but you’re behind the curve, really. The National History Club, so that’s actually a little, that’s something a little different. It deals with the Concord Review as well too, but we set it up over 20 years ago because one of the things we have often gotten from folks is that the Concord Review is sort of the elite of the elite and, you know, it’s not accessible to a lot of students, which that’s a conversation for a different day.

But the History Club, [00:13:00] we’re like, let’s just open this up to any school, middle or high school in the United States that wants to start a after-school history club because we wanna just get more students interested in history as sort of almost like a minor league to then the Concord Review because it’s like if you’re not interested in history, you’re not gonna be able to write a 10-page or a 12-page or 15-page paper.

So that is sort of served as like an entryway for some students or some schools to then get up to the Concord Review, really. So it’s like a different tier in that sense. We don’t require for the History Club, it’s not like you have to– A club isn’t required to, like, read history books and then write papers.

They can, you know, do anything. They can go for site visits or watch historical movies in the class after school. But it’s just getting more students interested in history with the hope that then they’ll turn to something like writing a paper and submitting it to the Concord Review

Albert Cheng: Let me ask a broader question here ’cause, I mean, it seems like, so the National History Club and the Concord Review, I mean, they’re playing a, a [00:14:00] role in trying to get students back to reading and writing about history.

We know history in, in our schools today, there’s always been controversy in how it should be taught. I mean, we’ve got recent debates around wokeism, and then of course more recent debates on needing a content-rich pedagogy or curriculum. Right. That hasn’t always been the case. We’ve got teachers being afraid of talking about controversial historical figures and events.

And then, you know, you’ve got, at the same time, people calling for a renewal of civic education or drawing a sense of our shared humanity or belonging to a country, right? So all sorts of issues. So in your view, what, what are the three things American K-12 education can do to bring back students’ interests in, in reading and writing about history?

Bob Nasson: Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s one that I think about a lot. I think the first one is this goes to writing a history research paper is reading a history book or reading, you know, a few different history books. It’s very difficult to write a research paper if you’re not reading [00:15:00] any history book really, and sometimes in the schools.

And I understand this because sometimes you have, you know, it might be your junior year, your teacher’s expected to cover America from 1776 to the present day, and that’s difficult. That’s very surface level. But I remember going back to that junior year AP US history class, my teacher, not only did she assign a history research paper for us to do, but that summer we had to read Truman by David McCullough.

And I mean, that was like 800 pages, so I’m not, not necessarily recommending that every teacher do that. But there are so many good history books out there that students should be assigned these at some level, whether it’s during the summer or during the year, maybe reading– you read the first five or six chapters or something like that.

Because if you’re not reading history books, you’re not gonna be able to write a history research paper, really. And if you do, it’s gonna be very superficial. It’s not gonna be one that really goes into great detail about your subject. So, [00:16:00] you know, assign history books, and this has to be built into a department’s curriculum from, if we’re talking high school, freshman year through senior year.

It can’t just be one year. You have to say, “We’re committed to doing this every year with our students at some level.” The second thing is I think that there needs to– it goes to, it speaks to, you know, reading history books. You have to commit, almost like restore the research paper as expectation to finishing each class.

And Will has always talked about, he’s had this concept of the page per year plan, and that’s for like a school district, and it’s pretty simple. It’s like student first grade write like one page about anything. Second grade, two page. It’s just a way of building that muscle memory for doing something really.

You know, if you’re in ninth grade, if, if a school says, “All right, we’re gonna have a student write a seven-page history research paper,” it should continue the [00:17:00] year after and then the year after that, so that by the time that student’s a senior, maybe they’re doing one that’s 12 to 15 pages really. So you have to commit to this really.

You can’t just say, “We’re gonna do it in one class, and that’s it,” because if you do it for that one class, you’re only gonna have 20 to 25 students who experience that, and the rest of the students miss out on learning the research and writing skills that are so critical to success in college and beyond.

And then the other thing is too, and this ties into both– I think sometimes, especially in today’s day and age, we focus on sort of the quick and easy or, you know, it’s like let’s just move on from one thing to the next, and we’ll study this person for like two days and then move on from him or her to someone else.

But I think sometimes we need to slow down and reward depth over coverage really. And not everyone would agree with me on that, but Depth allows students, I think, [00:18:00] to fully understand people and, you know, issues in society and things like that. Because if you’re not really getting deep into the weeds of a subject or a person, you’re almost just finding out the very basics and moving on.

And, and that’s challenging in this day and age because a lot of what we do, not just in the schools, just in our lives, it’s like instead of sending off like a thoughtful letter anymore, it’s like I’m gonna send a three-sentence text, like really, like ’cause I just wanna get it done with really. But it doesn’t help your critical thinking skills as much really, ’cause you don’t sit there with the knowledge of like lots of different sides of a story really.

So I’d say assign history books, reward depth over coverage really, and then restore the research paper at some level at your high school or even if you can get it in before that, so that students can build off that every year and not just be like, “Oh, my junior year now you gotta write a 10-page paper,” and it’s like, “Well, I haven’t ever done more than [00:19:00] three,” like, “How do I possibly do that?”

‘Cause, you know, most students will give up or most teachers will be like, “I’m not doing that,” because, like, kids aren’t able to do that really. So, you know, it kinda leads to lower standards, I believe.

Albert Cheng: I’m looking forward to hearing a bit more about the page a year idea, and I know Alisha’s gonna ask a question about that.

But before I turn it over to her, one of the interesting things about the Concord Review is that you’re getting a lot of submissions and publishing work from authors that are from East Asian countries, which is fascinating to me. This is a, an American history journal. So what are those students from the Far East bringing to the table here about our understanding of history?

Bob Nasson: Yeah, and it kind of plays back into my answer I just gave you, those three answers that where we’ve seen more over the past probably decade, more papers submitted from China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea. A lot of those students are starting to get more of a background [00:20:00] in writing historical research.

They’re doing it earlier in their schools. So some of the teachers that I talk to or some of the students I talk to, international students, sometimes I’ll say, “Oh, is this your first time writing a fifteen-page research paper?” And they’re like, “No, like, this is the longest one I’ve done, but the last three or four years I’ve done a research page– paper on this topic, and it’s been like eight pages.

I’ve done a research paper on this topic, it’s been ten pages.” So they’re getting that muscle memory, really, so that when they’re asked to do something a little bit more substantial, they’re able to do it. There is not as much of a feeling of like, “How do I do this and where do I start?” It’s like, “Okay, I’ve done this before.

I can take this on. I can do a little bit more research, and I can build upon what I previously have, really.” What’s interesting too is, you know, a lot of those students as well too, it’s not just sometimes you think, oh, you know, are US students only writing about US history or Asian students only writing about Asian history?

But that’s sometimes not the case. They’re [00:21:00] writing about, you know, we published a paper, I think it was three years, from a young woman in Korea, I believe, who was writing about Poland, really, during World War II. And it was just– it was like, wow, like something that, you know, it’s not something that she’s probably heard a ton of in her time at school, but I think it was just something that really interested her and she was like, “I’m gonna take this and I’m gonna turn it into a Cobra Review paper, really.”

So it’s nice. I think that probably at this point it’s about seventy-five percent of the papers we publish are from United States high school students, and then twenty-five percent are from international students. But it adds a nice little flavor of different topics, and that’s something we’ve always, we’ve always said to students, we’re like, “We don’t tell you what to write about.

Just find a topic you’re interested in and go deep on it.” And because we’re receiving papers from so many different students across the globe, each issue, all the essays are really different from each other. So I always say to students, I’m like, [00:22:00] “You may not love every essay that we publish, but there’s got to be a few in there that will pique your interest.”

Alisha Searcy: That is really interesting. I love the fact that you bring in voices from different parts of the world. I love that perspective. Bob, for decades, Will Fitzhugh has had the idea of having students write a page a year research paper, and you guys kinda mentioned that a couple of seconds ago. And what we mean by that is first grade, write one page, second grade, two pages, and so on.

So in your experience, talk to us about the relationship between the quality of the history books kids read and their history research paper writing skills.

Bob Nasson: I would say kids who read good history books are able to absorb lots of different points of view, you know, lots of people and figures and facts.

They get to read, like, what a well-supported thesis looks like. You know, what counts as evidence, how historians handle ambiguity. Um, you know, there’s a lot of ambiguity in [00:23:00] history. Those are things that if you’re not reading history books, if you’re just reading textbooks or something that’s very surface level, you’re gonna be able to summarize something, but you can’t g- really go deep into a subject.

So, you know, the quality of books, like the ones who are reading good history books are able to really master a subject, or master for a high school student. I always say no one should read The Common Review and expect, like, graduate school work, but they probably know more about a subject at their school than anyone else, including maybe some of their teachers as well too, and that’s because they have read deeply, they’ve read history books, and they haven’t just skimmed for information.

They haven’t just looked at a textbook or read Wikipedia, something that gives you content but doesn’t really allow you to go deep into a subject.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah, and takes you out of the just memorizing things.

Bob Nasson: Exactly, yeah, yeah. And look, history, there’s a lot of … I don’t wanna say, [00:24:00] like, memorizing is always bad.

Like, you need to know certain figures and facts and dates and all that, but you shouldn’t just look at history and be like, “Well,” … I hear that sometimes with students, like, “Oh, it’s just people and dates and times, and there’s not much else other than that.” Right. I’m like, “Well, there’s a lot more to it if you get deeper into it,” but if you’re just covering it at the surface level, then yeah, I understand why someone would say that.

And it’s not interesting either if you’re just covering it at the surface level. History’s really interesting if you get deeper into the weeds.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah, and you’re right. You said it earlier. It helps you give a lot more context of what’s happening and help you to understand the, the figures more.

Bob Nasson: Yeah, I always say perspective.

It provides some level of perspective to the subject you’re studying.

Alisha Searcy: Makes sense. So I think we could argue that much of K-12 education is migrating towards workforce development, training and academic content, empty skills and STEM- Yeah … which aren’t bad things. But what does history [00:25:00] teach us about countries whose K-12 schools neglect the central academic excellence found in the humanities?

Bob Nasson: Yeah, it’s a good question in this day and age. And I always use a couple examples. Uh, one of our first funders for the Concord Review, he was a, a businessman who started a medical devices company. And I remember sometime, one time someone asked him, “Why would you fund something that’s history-related? It’s not STEM, it’s not engineering.

You’re doing science.” And he was like, “There’s a history to everything.” And he’s like, “I’m in the science field. I have to know the history of science, really.” Like, you have to know all the lead-ups to where you are in the present day or where you wanna go. And, you know, it’s like a country or person without any previous historical knowledge sorta leaves you aimless.

You’re more easily misled or, you know, you fall for more simplistic narratives, things like that. So I always say to students, like, “No matter what field you go into, even if you’re going into STEM or whatever it [00:26:00] might be, some level of history knowledge is really important.” And our authors, we stay in touch with a lot of them who, uh, are now in their 20s, 30s, some in their 40s.

And occasionally I get from people that are like, “Oh, is everyone now like a historian or, you know, a college professor?” And I’m like, “No.” Like, it runs the gamut. Like, some are lawyers, some are doctors that write for newspapers. One doctor wrote to us recently, and he’s like, “Everything that I do, everything I did for my paper in high school,” he’s like, “I’m still doing a version of that.

I always have to diagnose patients and take as much information as possible that I’m getting from lots of different sources, and put that together in like a coherent plan for that patient going forward.” So he’s like, “It’s maybe not history in the sense of no, I’m not reading a book about George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, but it’s that same use of analyzing information and then really coming to a conclusion about the best way forward, really.”

So yeah, I get that history isn’t [00:27:00] as glamorous these days as STEM or technology or whatever it might be, but my argument is that no matter what field you’re in, you’re gonna have to have some basic understanding of history. And it always shocks me when I talk to some people and they have very little knowledge about the past.

And I’m like, “How do you make sense of what’s going on in the present day without some knowledge of the past?” And you don’t have to be, you know, knowledgeable about every single subject, but some basic level understanding is critical for all American citizens.

Alisha Searcy: Right. Very good point. K-12 education policy is most often just focused on urban education or closing various achievement gaps, seemingly to the exclusion of a lot of other policy priorities.

Meanwhile, the Concord Review focuses on academic excellence, not just remedial education. Would you say that the American education system does enough to create academic opportunities for the highest achieving [00:28:00] students of all socioeconomic backgrounds, races, ethnicities, and nationalities?

Bob Nasson: Yeah. Yeah, it’s tough ’cause it really, you know, it, it can differ from state to state or town to town.

I do think there are ex- I call them excellence gaps where, you know, a lot of students … And I use this as a, you know, I always come back to working at The Concord Review and being the editor for these past four years, where for every one student that has heard of The Concord Review, there are probably 10 to 20 or even more that haven’t heard about The Concord Review.

And what a lot of those students will say to me, they’re like, “Oh, like, you know, I really enjoyed reading The Concord Review, but I don’t have the ability to write a paper of this level.” And some of them will say like, “I just haven’t had the experience to do something like this.” So that’s what I always think.

I’m like, you have so many students out there who are really chomping at the bit to do something like this. They just haven’t been afforded the opportunity to take something like this on. And it’s challenging because are [00:29:00] schools responsible for this, like school district? Sure, but there are also societal issues as well too that play a role into this.

But the good thing is we have seen The Concord Review, the number of subscribers, the number of sub- submissions has been steadily going up over the past 10 years. But there are so many other people out there, so many students who they were like, “Oh, like I didn’t know history was valued really.” And it’s like, “Oh, we’ve been doing this for 40 years trying to say like, this is important.”

But, you know, they haven’t been alerted to it. They don’t have the skills because it hasn’t been pushed in school. And that’s where, you know, those excellence gaps I think come in, in that like you have students who, I’m not saying they would get published in The Concord Review, but they would be capable of writing a paper that maybe they could then submit to The Concord Review and more importantly, gain the critical skills that come with writing a history research paper.

So yeah, I think it’s a challenge in [00:30:00] that there are a lot of students who have that access, but there are others who just, you know, for a variety of reasons, just have never been exposed to top level academic work. And you know, this goes back to what Will Fitzhugh set out to do 40 years ago. He’s like, “I just wanna expose other students to great student academic work.”

There’s so much focus on sports and arts and music and things like that. He’s like, “I always wanted students to see, hey, like it’s cool to write a paper like this and get published.”

Albert Cheng: Very cool.

Bob Nasson: Yeah, it is. It is. Yeah. Yeah, you may not realize it at the time, but I think, you know, especially after the fact, you’re like, “Hey, like-” That’s something that is no small feat.

You know, we hear that from our authors or even for students who don’t get published. Like, sometimes I have students reach out to me who we don’t select their essays for publication and they’re like, “You know what? Like, I’m just so glad I did this in high school because, you know, it helped get me ready for college to some extent.”

So those excellence [00:31:00] gaps, I think just figuring out a better way to close those would allow students from all different backgrounds who want to do this type of work or wanna excel at academics in general would make, I think, for a better educational system.

Alisha Searcy: Yeah, and I really love that concept of the excellence gap and just talking about exposure because so many kids can do these things.

They are capable, but if they’re not exposed to it, they don’t have the opportunity. So I think that’s a really- Yeah … powerful statement and reason, you know, for doing this work.

Bob Nasson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, we even do things like we charge for a subscription to Concord Review. It’s not super expensive. It’s like $70.

But if a school or student says like, “We don’t have the funds,” or something like that, like we’ll provide them like a complimentary copy or even some students, it’s $70 to submit your essay. You do receive the next four issues of the journal, so you get something back in return as well. But for students who some say don’t come from a family with a lot of [00:32:00] money or something along those lines, I say, “Just submit your paper.

It’s fine. We’ll waive the fee.” Like, because we want any student who’s interested in doing this type of work to have the access to it, really. And again, $70 isn’t a lot. It’s not like we’re charging $2,000 but still I’m like, I don’t wanna exclude any students who are curious and diligent and wanna do something like this.

So we waive that for certain students just because we’re like, “Hey, like we don’t wanna shut any out to this.”

Alisha Searcy: Yeah. Thank you for doing that. So my final question, and then after that I’m gonna ask you to read a favorite paragraph from one of the Concord Review’s student essays, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

As the country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, what are the kinds of student history essays that the Concord Review is publishing to honor US history in all of its greatness and thorny complexity?

Bob Nasson: We probably publish each issue, there’s probably like seven on US history, six or seven on US history.

So and I’ll [00:33:00] actually read the excerpts from this essay we’re gonna publish in the upcoming fall issue. It’s on the Patriot Press, so the communication network the colonists had during the American Revolution. But we’ve published recent ones on the Dust Bowl, the P-51 Mustang during World War II, one on Benjamin Franklin, John Brown’s raid.

You know, it really runs the gamut. It’s not on, you know, one specific… It’s not just like it’s on the Revolution, or it’s not just on like the Civil War. It’s covers the gamut of US history, and we think that makes for, you know, interesting read journal in that I said it before, there’s always something that I tell students might…

There has to be a few of these essays that interest you. You know, I think it’s great with the 250th, though, you know, I always say to people too though, like I hope on this, our 250th, sometimes I worry that I don’t want people to just use it as like a checkbox where it’s like, “All right, I went to a history museum for our 250th,” or, you know, “I read a book.[00:34:00]

I checked it off, and now we’re onto our 251st, and I can stop like going to those history museums or reading a history book or something along those lines.” It’s like, well, it should continue, like just like we’ve been publishing the Concord Review for the past forty years. I hope people just don’t say like, “All right, it’s our 250th, and now it’s over, and I can go back to not paying much attention to the past really.”

It’s like, well, you should keep on reading those history books, keep on writing those papers, and becoming more knowledgeable about our country’s history and the world’s history as well too.

Alisha Searcy: Very good. Well, close us out. We would love to hear that essay, and I feel like it’s hot off the press because it won’t be printed until the fall.

It

Bob Nasson: actually is not gonna be published until September. So actually, if the author is listening to this, my guess is he’s probably not. He’s a, he’s a, a senior at a high school in Texas. Like this will be a surprise for him ’cause I haven’t even told him yet he’s being published. So- Oh my God … but I have the, I have the proof of it right now.

We’re doing proofreading on each one. But the title of this essay is called “The Patriot Press [00:35:00] and the Boston Massacre: Narrative Dominance in the Colonial Newspaper Network.” And, and this is the first paragraph. This is the opening. It goes, “On the evening of March fifth, seventeen seventy, British soldiers fired into a crowd of Boston townspeople, killing five colonists.

The facts were immediately disputed as to whether Captain Thomas Preston ordered his men to fire. However, the legal facts in Preston’s acquittal scarcely mattered in the popular memory of the event.” Four years later, John Hancock stood before a packed audience and urged that every parent tell the shameful story to his listening children until tears of pity glisten in their eyes and boiling passions shake their tender frames.

Hancock was not calling for a neutral retelling of facts. He was calling for storytelling that reflected the Patriot version of events that laid the blame firmly at the feet of the British. The Patriots were able to irreversibly frame this incident as a massacre that epitomized British tyranny because a revolution in colonial communication [00:36:00] enabled their story to travel further and faster, establishing a narrative that a slow British reaction could not overcome.

And this student goes on to talk about how back in the 1770s, the colonists were able to put together, through newspapers and other communication methods, a way of their story to spread more quickly than the British, who were writing letters and then sending those letters back on ships to England, really.

And he said, to a certain extent, the facts didn’t matter. The facts mattered to some extent, but, you know, sometimes it’s just the story that you tell, and he tells that story how that sort of spurred the revolution along. It’s interesting ’cause it even echoes, like, things in the present day, where sometimes, like, it’s not sometimes the accuracy of the story, it’s the speed of the story, and he shows how that played out back in the 1770s in colonial America.

Alisha Searcy: Very well done, Texas student. Very well.

Bob Nasson: Yeah. [00:37:00] And congratulations if this is your first time hearing that you’re gonna be published as well too.

Alisha Searcy: Right. How exciting. And we, we are honored that you chose this platform to make that announcement, so thank you for that. How exciting. My pleasure. Bob, thank you so much for joining us.

This has been a great interview, and we both appreciate, I know, the fact that you’re giving students a platform to have a voice and to display their brilliance and to be published. So thanks for all you do.

Bob Nasson: Thanks, Alisha. Thanks, Albert. I appreciate your time today

Albert Cheng: Well, Alisha, you know, at the beginning of the show you mentioned about how maybe a, a theme of some of the things we’re talking about is what students are doing and- Mm-hmm … and their accomplishments, and this interview didn’t disappoint. I’m just fascinated to see all the contributions and learn about the contributions of students to The Concord Review.

Alisha Searcy: [00:38:00] Yeah, it’s really powerful, and I think it’s all about giving young people a voice and a platform, and I love the work that’s happening here at the institute, so very good interview. Very good information.

Albert Cheng: This is gonna bring us to the end of our show, so I wanna thank you for co-piloting, co-hosting the show, as always.

Alisha Searcy: Yes, good to be back together again.

Albert Cheng: That’s right. Before we completely sign off, here’s the tweet of the week from Education Next: “Do school closures save money? A study of California districts reveals the challenge of balancing budgets as enrollments decline.” And we’ve mentioned a little bit of this on the show from time to time about the declining school-age population and what schools have to do with that.

Anyway, we got a study about this in California, so check that out. And join us also next week. We’re gonna have Julie Young again, the author of the book Say Yes: How Virtual Became Reality, to discuss AI.

Alisha Searcy: Mm.

Albert Cheng: That brings us full [00:39:00] circle, Alisha, to the story that you brought up at the beginning.

Alisha Searcy: Yes. Glad I’ll be here for the interview.

Albert Cheng: All right. Well, until then, everyone be well, and we’ll see you next time.

Alisha Searcy: Take care.