I have a confession.

I have succumbed to the phenomenon. I’m officially addicted to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new smash-hit musical ‘Hamilton‘.

As a big fan of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work from his days with ‘In the Heights’, I had seen an early version of ‘Hamilton’ at the Public Theater last April and was immediately drawn by the concept of using a hip-hop score to tell the story of our founding fathers. If the concept of cabinet meetings being delivered through rap battles wasn’t enough, I was intrigued by its use of a minority cast to demonstrate the current demographic paradigm of America and juxtapose it with the racial homogeneity of Washington’s America. More importantly, as any successful musical, the soundtrack was unique, catchy, and lyrically profound.

Since it’s early successes, I saw a lot of bold claims about Hamilton. Many argued that it would be as culturally relevant as Rent or a Chorus Line, each having won a Pulitzer Prize of Drama. Hamilton corroborated the strength of that argument with its Pulitzer Prize win in April. Many claimed it would oust ‘The Producers’ in Tony Nominations, a claim ‘Hamilton’ would soon answer with 16 Tony Nominations. Financially, it has sold out every show for 2016 and regularly rakes in over six figures a week. It has its own sub-reddit. In every respect, Hamilton is making history.

The most interesting aspect of Hamilton? It has fundamentally changed the way some schools are viewing education and learning.

Hamilton’s biggest physical foray into education has been through a $1.46 million grant by The Rockefeller Foundation to the Gilder Lehrman Institute, allowing 20,000 public school students in NYC Title I schools the opportunity to see Hamilton and integrate teachings from Hamilton into contemporary social studies curricula. On top of that, teachers all over the country are using rap as a vehicle to teach students about history topics outside of Hamilton. Miranda cites Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar as influences in his own understanding of history, fully cognizant that Hamilton is uniquely positioned as the next big gateway into social studies education. It inspires curiosity and conversation into an area where many have struggled to build excitement.

As someone who knows the Preamble of the Constitution and the process of Bill Passage single-handedly from Schoolhouse Rock Jr, I’m no stranger to a catchy tune introducing and contextualizing complex topics. I personally learned way more about Alexander Hamilton’s views on the nation’s financial infrastructure and the nature of his relationships with other founding fathers from a string of memorable raps than a lot of what I had studied in American History.

At it’s crux though, Hamilton is about more than memorable raps. To understand Hamilton, you have to assess the dive it takes into character depth. While most shows present their titular protagonist as a hero, Hamiltondoesn’t beat around this ubiquitous bush — it presents Alexander Hamilton as a conflicted individual whose intelligence, hunger and ambition is consistently at odds with his arrogance, condescension and failed temperament. It shows the struggle Hamilton undergoes to garner support for his financial plan, his bitter and conscientious alienation of his political allies, and even his deeply tense relationship with his wife. It presents Hamilton as a significant contributor to our country’s founding, but a contributor whose character was anything but perfect.

In an education system where we celebrate the successes of America by immortalizing the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Hamilton presents an inconvenient truth: these same characters had their own respective vulnerabilities and flaws. In a revealing and cathartic line where Jefferson is headed from Monticello to New York, his character comments: “Looking at the fields, I can’t believe that we are free” as we see his slaves move his carriage across the stage. We see Thomas Jefferson, a champion of liberty, as someone who not only condoned slavery but was heavily dependent on the system. We see George Washington, someone we thought to be an almost invincible leader, as a rather insecure and exasperated general who was hours away from losing the Revolutionary War on several occasions. We see James Madison, one of the nation’s foremost diplomats, to be just as Machiavellian as the other Jeffersonian Republicans

We see that, despite the many successes and legends surrounding our founding fathers, the birth of our two party system was largely a product of stubborn personalities and uncompromising tactics. We learn that perspective plays a large role in Hamilton — Aaron Burr, rarely visited in history due to his villainous role in the duel that led to Hamilton’s death, comes to life as someone we actually come to sympathize with. Learning the motivations behind the play’s principal antagonist justifies us to victimize him in a setting where he has historically been anyone but the victim.

While there are certainly parts of Hamilton that are exaggerated with Miranda’s artistic license, a majority of the play stays true to Ron Chernow’s biographical accounts (Chernow served as a historical consultant to the show) and to history itself. Hamilton strips itself of the proverbial sugar-coat — everything from Hamilton’s extramarital affair to the implosion that split the Federalist party is included.

American history education has long been criticized for its selective censorship of American history’s most negative aspects. Recently, a Texas high school removed mentions of the KKK and Jim Crow in an effort to sanitize perceptions of America. While this is one of the most drastic examples, it represents an unhealthy theme where adults and educators feel a responsibility to protect students by appealing to narratives that make them feel proud about America. In an education system where a long-term goal is to emphasize critical thinking in students, there may be a new and radical approach: being honest about the facts and letting students create their own interpretations. To be disingenuous is to let students entertain a context that does not exist, a far more dangerous reality for a precocious mind.

Teaching America’s successes by mythologizing its characters is not only intellectually dishonest but creates a new narrative where success supposedly comes from perfection. It’s important to remember that a lot of success comes from people who are holistically flawed, versed in failure, and filled with their own insecurities. In many situations, success factors in time and place. This includes the rocky journey of our first country’s first president, George Washington.

The fact that students are memorizing the lyrics to the Cabinet Battles in Hamilton shows that they have at least have a fundamental understanding of decision making — it’s a battle. There are multiple sides and multiple sacrifices to be made. All actions will have equal and opposite reactions. All good ideas will have their devil’s advocates. The more students can empathize with this from our history, the more they can apply this same understanding to life.

I personally hope that Hamilton is just the start. I hope it ushers in a new era where our education system accepts conflicted humans rather than commemorating accomplished individuals as saints. We can teach that it’s perfectly okay to admire and idolize historical icons while also recognizing their mortality.

It’s risky. It’s dangerous. It’s messy. But at the end of the day, it may be the best gift our education system can provide to its young thinkers, who will gradually see themselves more capable of the same successes.

Well — the second best gift. Nothing can beat Hamilton tickets.