There are different sorts of terrorists - those intent on extinguishing liberty and those intent on establishing or preserving it. The original tea party participants were the latter.
Apparently, the only way to gain recognition and consideration of your agenda from the U.S. Government these days, is to be a terrorist
I grew up counting on stability in this country. Not sure that is an option now.
Tossing tea into a harbor is not causing fear. No blood was shed. No threats to kill the captain, or his wife or children were made. No women and children were targetted. No women and chidlren were used as human shields. It made no British citizens 'knees quake or quiver. No redcoat peed in his trousers at the sight of blood because there was none to see. Terrorists do not pay for broken doorknobs or ponder the ethics of property destruction.
The Boston tea party is a poor example of a terrorist act because it does not meet the criterion for terrorism.
The "educators" would have been better served to find an example of mob violence against loyalists- of which there was some- if their point is that you can find people who go outside ethical behavior into the realm of terror if you look hard enough. Instead we see people go outside ethical behavior to define terrorism so loosely that they can apply it to anyone, so that they can then make moral equivalency argument to students when apologizing for Palestinian terror, etc, which is where this is headed. It ends when the word "terrorism" ceases to have meaning.