HEROES OF LIBERTY

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With classic literature, primary source documents and the U.S. Constitution as the backbone of this course, students will engage in hands-on, fun and inspiring educational activities as they wend their way through American and world history beginning in 1913 to the present-day. 

The object of Heroes of Liberty is to empower students to become heroes of liberty in both their private and public lives.  This objective can be realized as students choose to “enlist” in the Army of Liberty, and fulfill weekly “missions” at home and alongside their peers. Students will have fun as they challenge one another in completing military missions, earning medals of honor, and possibly achieving the Nobel Prize by the end of the course!  Such missions include participating in book discussions, engaging in document studies, cooking food from historic periods, serving others in their families and communities, writing letters to congressmen/women, taking on physical fitness challenges and more!  

One of the objects of the course is to observe and trace how the U.S. Constitution has changed over time and whether those changes have been positive or negative for liberty.  The course assumes the students are familiar with Constitutional principles.  However, they may still engage in the course if they haven’t studied the Constitution as we will be referring to and reading from it frequently together. (See the “Authors of Liberty” curriculum/class for a further in-depth study of the U.S. Constitution). 

The course is designed for students to complete missions, earn medals of honor at the end of each unit, and obtain the Nobel Prize.  In addition, students may go “over and beyond” by completing additional missions which could earn them a “Grammy” award by the end of the course.

Books and essays to be read during “Heroes of Liberty”:

• The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

• Red Scarf Girl by Ji-li Jiang

• The Chosen by Chaim Potak 

• The Children’s Story by James Clavel 

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck

• I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai

• Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

Documents and poetry to be studied in “Heroes of Liberty”:

• Treaty of Versailles (abridged)

• Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx

• John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961)

• I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr.

• Ronald Reagan’s speech The Boys of Pointe du Hoc (1984)

• Abbreviated writings by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Churchill

• Constitutional Amendments 19-27

• Poetry by Dylan Thomas, Wilfred Owens, T.S. Eliot, Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo and others

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