History Is Our Teacher; the Future Our Responsibility

Democracy is a Living System that Depends on the Flourishing of Humans Within It

Zachary Cote, Founder of Thinking Nation

When Zachary Cote’s South Los Angeles School District received a grant to teach the Constitution ion, he worried less about a knowledge gap around the Constitution and more of a disposition gap around thinking critically, reasoning with evidence, and engaging across differences. He saw his students were "big fish in the small pond of Inglewood, California" who might well "leave for college and drown."

He saw that even when districts successfully reoriented historical narratives to be more inclusive—helping students “see themselves in the past” it didn't always produce the empowerment they hoped for. Students still lacked tools to engage confidently or support their reasoning with evidence.

Cote founded Thinking Nation in 2020 to teach ten core historical thinking skills, including contextualization, causation, evaluating evidence, historical empathy, designed to work across all content. Students learn systematic protocols for analyzing documents, asking questions about sources, and building evidence-based arguments. As his students learned to say: "Our opinions don't matter unless we have evidence."

Case in point: When Trump was elected in 2016, Cote's students wanted to boycott the inauguration. He insisted they watch and take notes. The result wasn't indoctrination but empowerment: students identified logical fallacies and contradictions themselves, backing reactions with evidence rather than emotion.

This training builds agency. In an instant gratification society where adolescent brains are rewired by social media and AI, historical thinking offers something different: slow thinking, meaningful engagement, power. Students aren't passive receivers of narratives but active analysts. 

Evidence alone produces arrogance, Cote argues, leading to "Let me tell you these facts why I'm right and you're wrong." That is why historical thinking adds humility. "By trying to understand the past on its own terms, by trying to contextualize, by exercising historical empathy, it's an act of humility," Cote says. Students learn to "stand for truth, stand for justice, and also empathize with people who don't see that." This humility, approaching inquiry with curiosity rather than certainty, is what democracy requires.

The approach transcends content wars. Rather than seeking a shared historical narrative, impractical in a pluralistic society, Cote proposes shared disciplinary practices. Students don't need the same background to ask questions about contextualization or evaluate evidence systematically. The organization walks the talk:Thinking Nation now partners with California and Texas. When culture wars pit 1619 against 1776, historical thinking asks: "Why do both of these things matter?" The question deflates the argument.

Cote focuses on civic disposition, an orientation toward how you approach information and engage with others, not just civic knowledge (facts about government) or civic action (protests, organizing).

Initially, Cote tried to scale by hiring more teachers to grade student work. This proved unsustainable. The breakthrough came with AI-powered assessment tools developed in partnership with OpenAI, allowing students to receive feedback in real-time during class and immediately revise their thinking.

Historical thinking isn't about memorizing the past. It's about training citizens who can analyze evidence, exercise intellectual humility, and engage productively across difference. History is the gateway. Individual agency, the power to think critically and support your reasoning, enables collective thriving when paired with the humility to understand perspectives not your own. Democracy needs both the confidence to stand for justice and the empathy to understand those who don't yet see it.