From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country.

I think what we're seeing is a classic example of not really looking in history, but trying to fight a current battle through history.

History has become a foil, if you will, as opposed to an honest, forthright effort to try to understand history. History has become a foil, if you will, as opposed to a honest, forthright effort to

try to understand history for its own sake. This is your host, Scott Bertram. And that's Dr. Matthew

Spalding, Vice President of Washington Operations and Dean of the Van Andal Graduate School of Government

at Hillsdale in D.C. We talked at length with Dr. Spalding about the Hillsdale College 1776 curriculum. We go further in depth with Dr. Spalding on this week's program. Dr. Spalding, thanks for joining us. Great to be with you, Scott, and welcome to Washington, D.C. Thank you. Yes, we're recording today, actually, in our Boyle studio at the Kirby Center in Washington, D.C.

I haven't been here since pre-pandemic.

So my first time since masks are mandated in various places.

Well, we've been here the whole time, and the school has not shut down.

We have continued.

It's a beautiful place out here in Washington and the studios up here on the top floor.

We talked today about the 1776 curriculum that Hillsdale has just released. Dr. Kathleen

O'Toole was with us a little while ago. It sort of give us the very basics on this, the week of

release. And we might go a bit deeper with you today, but for those

who maybe missed the initial conversation, what is this 1776 curriculum? How long has it been

under development? Well, I think the how long has been in development is actually a quite

long time. The college since 1844 has been teaching.

So I think this really goes back to all of those routes.

We've had our own K-12 Academy, I believe, for some decades now.

And we've had charter schools, which we have now many for quite a few years.

So the curriculum has been underway, shall we say, long predates the current controversies, whether those are 1619 or 1776, whatever it might be.

The immediate curriculum does come out in this moment for a particular reason

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