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Democracy and Citizenship:
The 250th Celebration of Thomas Jefferson's Birthday
Teacher's Student Activities
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U.S. History and Government Architecture, Philosophy and Law
Students celebrate Jefferson's birthday by reflecting on some of his beliefs and accomplishments.
Students gain a greater understanding of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Students better appreciate the importance of education for a successful democracy.
Students appreciate Thomas Jefferson as a multi-faceted person: architect, educator, farmer, gardener, lawyer, mathematician, musician, and scientist.
- Examine these guide materials. Have students complete the pre-program activities so they will be ready and able to participate in discussions regarding the program.
- Discuss the "Issue Question" and poll your students.
Originated from Monticello and New York City Students will join guests Dr. Bernard Bailyn, Sol Linowitz, David McCullough, and Vincent Scully in a celebration of Thomas Jefferson's life on the occasion of the 250th celebration of his birth. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States is best remembered for the many accomplishments he achieved and offices he held in his lifetime. Among the milestones of Jefferson's life are: The writing of the Declaration of Independence, his contribution to the creation of the Bill of Rights, his political career in America, his ministry in France, The Louisiana Purchase, and his enduring concern for education culminating in the founding of the University of Virginia. On his tombstone he requested that only three of his accomplishments be listed-author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Statue of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.
The Declaration of Independence is a symbol of freedom. Thomas Jefferson wrote it as a letter to King George III telling him about the many things that Americans found wrong with his laws and policies. The Declaration states that "all men are created equal." It also states that people have the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." July 4, 1776, was the date that the Second Continental Congress voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence. We celebrate this day as the birthday of the United States of America.
Dr. Bernard Bailyn
Bernard Bailyn is Adams University Professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is one of the most honored historians in America. Professor Bailyn is a distinguished educator who has taught at Harvard for more than 40 years. His work centers on the history of the colonies, the American Revolution, and the Anglo-American in the pre-industrial era. He has earned innumerable high honors, including 10 honorary degrees, the National Book Award, the Bancroft Prize, and two Pulitzer Prizes for History.
Vincent J. Scully, Ph.d.
Dr. Vincent Scully is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also one of the world's leading architectural historians and critics. At age 16, Vincent Scully entered Yale on a full scholarship and signed up for an art history course. He earned his doctorate and began teaching at Yale and, over the next 44 years, taught to audiences of enraptured students. Professor Scully inspired not only many of today's important American architects but also the field's leading historians, critics, and professors. This brilliant author and commentator received an emotional farewell during his final lecture, attended by dozens of architects whose lives he had touched. They collectively presented him with a standing ovation, in tribute to their beloved professor, "the most influential architecture teacher in American history."
When architectural historian Vincent Scully retired from Yale last April, his final lecture to a freshman class made the front page of the New York Times. There sat Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial while a student of Scully's. Beside her was New York's Battery Park City designer, Cesar Pelli, and Prince Charles' architectural adviser, Leon Krier. All had come to give an ovation to the man once described by Philip Johnson, arguably the most powerful architect in America, as "the most influential architecture teacher, ever."
Scully argues, as he has for decades, for the creation of a more humane architecture that returns to classical and vernacular traditions to restore the fragile urban fabric that sustains
community. It is a mark of his persistence that his vision, scorned in the postwar decades by disciples of European modernism, is now at the center of the best contemporary architecture.
But it has been a long struggle. As a graduate student at Yale just after World War 11, when everyone else was swooning over the grand concrete, glass and steel visions of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, Scully fell in love with traditional American architecture, especially New England's "shingle style." While others still dismissed Frank Lloyd Wright as a provincial redneck, Scully championed him as the intellectual equal of his European peers.
"There is not one solution for everything. You have to love diversity rather than be afraid of it. You have to go beyond concepts of perfection to the unaccountable richness of life. Towns, like human life, are complex, ambiguous, humane, ironic." So, too, is the generous vision of Vincent Scully.
David Mccullough
David McCullough is a master storyteller and one of America's most distinguished historians. He is the recipient of many honors, including the National Book Award for "The Path Between the Seas: The Creating of the Panama Canal" and a rare second National Book Award for "Mornings ; on Horseback," the story of young Theodore Roosevelt's struggle to manhood. David is also the recipient of the Diamond Jubilee Medal for excellence from the City of New York, for "The Great Bridge," a fascinating story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. He recently authored "Truman," the deeply moving story of the seemingly ordinary man from Missouri who was perhaps the most courageous President in our history. This best-seller earned Mr. McCullough the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Writer and historian David McCullough is the author of five distinguished books, each of which has received wide critical and popular acclaim: The Johnstown Flood (1968); The Great Bridge (1972), the story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge; The Path Between the Seas (1977); Mornings of Horseback (1982), which won for Mr. McCullough a rare second National Book Award for Biography (renamed the American Book Award); and Truman.
"We have no better social historian, " wrote John Leonard in The New York Times in his review of Mornings on Horseback, the story of young Theodore Roosevelt's struggle to manhood. A national best-seller, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it was also the winner of the Los Angeles Times prize for biography.
Mr. McCullough's celebrated history of the Panama Canal, The Path Between the Seas, an overnight best-seller, was winner of the National Book Award for History, the Parkman Prize, the Cornelius Ryan award, and the Samuel Eliot Morison award. It is a work of history that also helped influence history, playing an important part in determining the nation's policy concerning the future of the Canal.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1933, Mr. McCullough was educated there and at Yale. In addition to the honors already mentioned, he has received the New York Diamond Jubilee Award for excellence (for The Great Bridge) and the National Cowboy Hall of Fame Award for the best magazine article dealing with a Western subject ("Glory Days in Medora," Geo, October 1979). He has been granted honorary membership in the American Society of Civil Engineers, their highest honor, bestowed for distinction in the field. (Mr. McCullough is one of the few non-engineers to be so recognized.) He is Senior Contributing Editor of American heritage magazine, a fellow of the Society of American Historians, and a member of the advisory boards of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress and the Wesleyan University Writers Conference. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of New Mexico. He has written for numerous publications, lectured widely, and figured in several television specials dealing with historical themes. The Public Broadcasting film, "The Brooklyn Bridge," which he narrated, was an Academy Award nominee in the documentary category.
Mr. McCullough is married to the former Rosalee Barnes. They have five children and make their home in West Tisbury, Massachusetts.
The Honorable Sol Linowitz Attorney and Ambassador
Ambassador Sol Linowitz is a Senior Partner of the international law firm Coudert Brothers in Washington, D.C. He emerged from an immigrant Jewish household to become a Phi Beta Kappa college graduate who earned his law degree from Cornell, where he was first in his class. Sol later rose to the Chairmanship of Xerox Corporation in its early years of spectacular growth and then became the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States. He was appointed by President Carter as Co-Negotiator of the Panama Canal Treaties and the Personal Representative of the President for Middle East Negotiations. Ambassador Linowitz has been awarded honorary degrees from more than 35 colleges across the nation, in recognition of his distinguished career and sterling accomplishments.
Regardless of what curriculum you are teaching, your students will benefit more from the program if they read the student handouts and complete the pre-program activities. Discuss featured guests and the reasons they are on the program.
Architecture
Monticello was Thomas Jefferson's home. Monticello means "little mountain" in Italian. Few houses in America more accurately reflect the personality of their owner than does Jefferson's Monticello. Its design, construction, and remodeling, for which he determined virtually every detail, spanned over forty years, beginning in 1768. His drawing of the first version of the house show that he rejected the Georgian architecture he saw in Virginia and adopted a formal classicism based primary on the published work of the sixteenth century Italian architect Andrea Palladio. Some of Jefferson's ideas for the design of the house came from his study of ancient Roman buildings. Designing buildings was one of Thomas Jefferson's favorite activities. He first learned about building in books. Jefferson had such an attention to detail that he oversaw every aspect of the furnishing of his house, including the designs of the curtains and color of the walls. Most of the furniture and objects at Monticello today were owned by Jefferson or his family. He even designed the gardens that surround Monticello with a variety of flowers from Europe and North America. Jefferson's most famous designs in addition to Monticello are the Virginia State Capitol and the University of Virginia. He used an architectural drawing table with a top that adjusts to many different angles and heights.
Education and Democracy
Jefferson was not content to influence the course of democracy for the United States, he was concerned with maintaining it for the future. The educational system proposed for Virginia was also a part of Jefferson's comprehensive plan for republican government. The lower schools would provide literacy for the entire population, which, combined with a free press, was necessary for an informed public opinion. Graduates of the upper schools or colleges, would supply the leadership so essential to a representative government, while scholarships awarded on the basis of merit would prevent identification of educational opportunity with economic privileges. Jefferson did not believe that an ignorant people could make rational and responsible decisions about public affairs. Jefferson's fellow Virginians were not prepared for so comprehensive a system of free public education, however, and the only part of it that he secured was the University of Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson, an influential political leader and philosopher, is a man for the 21st century. The principles and beliefs set forth by Jefferson are still admired today as new countries struggle to formulate a constitution or establish a democratic system of government. Jefferson's fundamental political tenets or achievements: democratic government, international order, religious freedom, and education are as relevant today as they were in Jefferson's day. We hope that a greater understanding of Thomas Jefferson, the man and his idea, will assist students in appreciating Jefferson as an "American Genius" with a legacy that lives on.
1 . What do you think was Thomas Jefferson's major contribution to history? What is he primarily known as, a fiery revolutionary or a man who quietly used words to their best advantages?
2. Thomas Jefferson believed in certain unalienable rights that he incorporated in the Declaration of Independence. What did he mean by the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
3. Thomas Jefferson, like Benjamin Franklin, was an inventor. List some of his inventions. Are they in use today?
4. Jefferson was the third President of the United States. What did he do when his term of office was over?
5. List the famous men who were Jefferson's friends and co-revolutionaries. Did he have any enemies? Who were they?
The following places were an integral part of Thomas Jefferson's life. We urge you to use this assignment as a geography quiz by having your students locate the places on a map and scribing their significance:
- Monticello, Virginia
- Charlottesville, Virginia
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Paris, France
- 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
- The Pacific Northwest
- Louisiana Purchase
1. Thomas Jefferson loved books and reading. Research his libraries and what became of them.
2. Why did Jefferson replace Benjamin Franklin as U.S. Minister to France? Was Jefferson a good ambassador?
What happened to him when he returned to the United States?
3. The Louisiana Purchase added more than 830,000 square miles of territory to the United States. The cost was three cents per acre. Was this land purchase a good thing for the United States?
Research the impact on the United States.
4. If Jefferson were alive today, what do you think his function in government would be? Would he necessarily have a function?
5. Both Jefferson and Washington lived in famous homes. List some other Presidents and their famous residences. How many had a hand in actually designing their homes?
6. Pick a pressing issue of the present day. Discuss how Jefferson would have handled it.
- Democratic of or relating to a major U.S. political party associated with policies of helping the common people.
- Federalist Paper writings by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay to convince the states to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
- Georgian architecture of or in the style of the Georgian era (1750-90). Some styles are Adam, Chippendale, Hepplewhite, and Sheraton.
- King George III King of England at the time of the American Revolution.
- Lewis and Clark Expedition Merriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the new territories added to the U.S. by the Louisiana Purchase.
- Louisiana Purchase the purchase by Jefferson of territory west of the Mississippi River from France for the United States.
- Palladian relating to a revived classic style in architecture based on the works of Andrea Palladio
- Republican of or relating to the republican party, a party that believes the supreme power belongs to the citizen through their right to vote.
- Renaissance relating to the transitional movement in Europe between medieval and modern times. Also, the neoclassic style of art and architecture from the period.
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