They may be young, scrappy, hungry, and happy, but does their knowledge astonish (or are they all brains and no polish)? In Partially Prudent: Hamilton's Effects on Students, a researcher at Maine’s Trinity College examines kids’ content knowledge a day or two after viewing Hamilton.
Her findings are alarming: Sixty-eight percent found George Washington “handsome and charming”; 49 percent associated fines with cabinet members’ lack of rhymes; and 84 percent could neither find nor call to mind the number of children (eight) born to this man so great, nor recall the wife of the famous striver (Elizabeth Schuyler).
Worse, their misconceptions appear to have bled over into pop culture, too. Recent performances by rapper Kanye West have been met with boos. One angry student snapped, “Rap’s all about sampling and sound, but don’t rip off the fathers by whom America was found.”
But critics, hold the phone—these negatives don’t stand alone. Students were twice as likely to know democratic principles the very next day, if the night before that same student saw the play. Forty-eight percent saw differences in the North’s and South’s economic cores, as well as their connection to the Civil War. Even those who slacked and only heard the soundtrack learned from the refrains and saw big gains: Sixty-two percent of the set better understood the national debt; and three out of four wanted to explore the important defeats of defendants that strengthened the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Finally, and most critically, attendants desired to participate civically—to vote and note what Hamilton wrote.
SOURCE: Erin Strait, “Partially Prudent: Hamilton's Effects on Students,” Trinity College Maine (March 2016).