Brandon Kaplowitz, an avid history fan his entire life, took top honors in the 2009 National History Day competition with his paper, “Thomas Paine: The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of a Revolutionary Thinker.” An eighth grader who has been homeschooled for three years, Kaplowitz passed his AP world history test at age 12, and will be entering Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire next year for high school.
He has been gearing up for the national final, which takes place at the University of Maryland June 14 to 18, with a recent interview with the president of the Thomas Paine Society in Bordentown, where Thomas Paine once lived. “My goal is to make it into the top 10 at finals,” he said. “Regardless of how I place, writing the paper has been one of the best learning experiences of my life.”
His advisor is Joan Ruddiman, the Grover Middle School PRISM teacher.
Community Middle School students, who were winners in the National History Day competition, have been invited by Governor Corzine, the Secretary of State, and the Commissioner of Education, to attend the 345th birthday salute to New Jersey in Trenton on June 24. The event will “salute our state’s history as a key element in our classrooms, our cultural life, and our tourism industry.”
Student winners include Shivani Badgi, eighth grade, junior individual performance of Indira Gandhi; Liam Knox, sixth grade, junior individual documentary on John J. Mooney; Matthew Greenberg, eighth grade and Bennett Greenberg, sixth grade, junior group documentary on Herbert Hoover; Vishnu Kaimal, seventh grade, junior individual website on J. Robert Oppenheimer; and Shruti Marathe and Alisha Kantikar, both in sixth grade, junior group exhibit on Raoul Wallenberg.
