Thank You for this fitting reminder.

Last year, I blogged the letter inviting Lincoln to give his "few appropriate remarks".

Very nice in deed. My daughter had an assigment is school, which was to debate the hero status of Lincoln. She was to defend his status. She asked my advice. I gave her a list of questions.

What would today be like with a hostile nation at our southern boarder? (beginning at the mason dixon line)
Would Spain hold power in the southern hemisphere and Cuba and dominate America?
Would North USA be able to defeat the Japanese and Germans at the same time?
Would a North USA be able to defeat communism?
Would North USA be a great hope and draw of enslaved people from all over the world?
Would that kind of America be a better place or worse?

She beat the other guy and got an A.

Still, it seems like it should not even be a question.

An incredibly stupid assignment for a teacher to give. Lincoln’s greatness should not be up for debate. What if a stronger student had won the anti-side of the debate and the students walked away from the assignment thinking Lincoln was not really all that worthy of being a hero? This kind of relativist nonsense teaching doesn’t promote much critical thinking. How about assuming that Lincoln is a great hero and then debating the reasons why or the reasons for his difficult decisions or why his ideas of self-government or the moral wrong of slavery were great? Everything in teaching today has to be a role-play, simulation, skit, or "debate." The teachers should drop John Dewey and modern pedagogy, give their students some documents (starting in middle school), and start role-playing Socrates.