Why More Patriotism should be taught in our Schools and our National Dilemma

By Scott P. Swain

Some people wonder if patriotism should be taught in public schools today. Some
say that diversity, multiculturism, and tolerance must be our watch cry and that we must
see the world globally. Many say it is egocentric to view America as anything special and
that we must embrace all nations as equals with ourselves. These philosophies sound
good and are good in many respects, but not at the expense of teaching our students that
we are Americans and that we have a responsibility, at all costs, to uphold our republic
and protect it for future generations. The manifest destiny of America is still that we are
the last and best hope of bringing freedom to the world!

Thomas Jefferson laid upon education the grave assignment of equipping
tomorrow’s adults with the knowledge, values, judgment, and critical faculties to
determine for themselves what “will secure or endanger” their freedom and their
country’s well-being. The U.S. Supreme Court was right half a century ago when, in the
epoch-shaping Brown decision, it declared education to be “the very foundation of good
citizenship” (Finn, 2003).

So what should be taught in our public schools and what is the purpose of our
schools? In 1796, George Washington stated:
A primary object . . . should be the education of our youth in the science of
government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important?
and what duty more pressing . . . than . . . communicating it to those who are to be
the future guardians of the liberties of the country? (Richardson, 1896).
The Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, observed the following in his famous
1835 study called Democracy in America:

If you question [an American] respecting his own country . . . he will inform you
what his rights are and by what means he exercises them . . . You will find that he
is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. . . . In the United States, politics are
the end and aim of education (De Tocqueville, 1835).

If politics are the end and aim of education, then we had better be about teaching
more, not less, on this subject. However, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001
deals with social studies mainly by omitting it from the new nationwide education
accountability system.

The omission of social studies-and, more importantly, of history, geography, and
civics-from NCLB is beginning to have deleterious effects. It’s causing some
states and schools to downplay these subjects in favor of those for which they’ll
be held publicly accountable and compared with each other. As the old educator
truism puts it, what gets tested is what gets taught. Already we hear reports from
the field that history is getting slighted due to the press to get everyone proficient
in math and reading. Hard as it is to imagine history getting less attention than
before in U.S. schools, this is surely not a good thing (Finn, 2003).

If we were proficient with regard to teaching history and civics in our schools,
this might not be such a national cataclysm. But consider our track record. For many

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years in the United States, there has been a drifting away from our founding documents
and the founding fathers who wrote them. In 1998 the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP) conducted a study of 4 th , 8 th and 12 th grade students with
regard to their understanding of civics (American government). Only 2% of the 4 th and 8 th
graders and 4% of the12 th graders had an advanced level understanding of civics. On
average, only 24% of all students could function at the proficient level, the level
identified by NAEP as the level at which all students should perform. One third of all
students could not demonstrate even a basic knowledge of American government (NAEP,
1998).

On April 10, 2003 the celebrated historian, David McCullough, told a Senate
committee that
We are raising a generation of people who are historically illiterate. . . . We can’t
function in a society, he explained, if we don’t know who we are and where we
came from. . . . When you have students at our Ivy League colleges saying they
thought Germany and Japan were our allies in World War II, you know we’ve got
a very serious problem (Finn, 2003).

So what is to be done? First, we can begin by learning the meaning of patriotism.
In 1828 Noah Webster defined patriotism in his first dictionary as:
…the passion which aims to serve one’s country, either in defending it from
invasion or protecting its rights and maintaining its laws and institutions in vigor
and purity. Patriotism is the characteristic of a good citizen, the noblest passion
that animates a man in the character of a citizen (Webster, 1828).

Patriotism must be one of the fundamental cornerstones in educational
curriculum. In order to love something, one must learn of it. Education precedes emotion;
ignorance precedes apathy. If we are to begin climbing out of the quagmire of ignorance
that we have unwittingly put ourselves in, then we had better start teaching American
history and civics like we used to teach them in America. And what was taught in our
recent past?

The McGuffey Readers were the most used schoolbook in the 19 th century. They
were considered remarkable literary works and probably exerted a greater influence upon
literary tastes in the United States than any other book, excluding the Bible. Concerning
how we should venerate our founding fathers, the McGuffey Sixth Reader states:
The memory of our fathers should be the watchword of liberty throughout the
land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will
it soon, we fear, behold their like again. Such models of moral excellence, such
apostles of civil and religious liberty, such shades of the illustrious dead looking
down upon their descendents with approbation or reproof, according as they
follow or depart from the good way, constitute a censorship inferior only to the
eye of God; and to ridicule them is national suicide (p. 128).

Another sample of this same patriotism is found in an 1897 Los Angeles Times
article entitled, Teach Patriotism in the Public Schools. Here is what it says:
There is certainly much pure patriotism in this country, but is there not room for
much more?…The cornerstone of our republic is the public school, and in it
should be taught the principles of government, the truths of political economy and
the fundamental facts in the history of our country. If we would have our people
loyal and patriotic we must teach our children to be so. William von Humboldt,

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first Minister of Public Instruction in Prussia, said: “Whatever we wish to see
incorporated into the life of the nation must be first introduced into its schools.”
Let us hasten the day when American public schools shall be educators in pure
patriotism.

Should not then the public school be the haven for literary works such as Alexis
De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense? Would
not books such as McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers be such a boon to our national
consciousness? America needs a reawakening, and much like the revivalists’ song,
entitled Give Me Some Old Time Religion, America needs to get some Old Time
Patriotism!

This need for patriotic fervor in our schools is no more evident than in the way we
are handling current political issues in the classroom. For instance, students who do not
have a grasp of who we are and what we stand for, cannot hope to see clearly the issues
and ramifications of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Instead of teaching
about how Americans have handled such invasions in the past such as the Revolutionary
War and the War of 1812, the pedagogical counsel that is being taught in our schools
today in response to the terrorist attacks is “long on multiculturalism, feelings, relativism,
and tolerance but short on history, civics, and patriotism” (Finn, 2003).

How has our nation handled threats to our national liberty in the past? The first
threat was the tyrannical reign of the king of Great Britain. Thomas Paine taught the
American people how we should react to such tyranny through his book written in 1776
entitled Common Sense.

It has been estimated that out of a population of 3,000,000 people, more than
300,000 bought copies. Translated into present-day terms, that would correspond to a sale
of around 25,000,000 copies. All who could read read it. Others listened while it was read
to them. Today the words of Thomas Paine, which will do much to promote a feeling of
patriotism in our schools, can and should be taught in our classrooms.

Paine said, in essence, that Americans should do what is right in their own eyes,
cut ties with England, and set up a government of their own. “We have it in our power to
begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since
the days of Noah until now” (Paine, 1776). In response, the people marched into battle to
secure the dream that Paine had painted in their minds to have a new kind of liberty that
had never been known on the face of the earth. A Constitutional Republic!

In addition to more patriotic lessons being taught, we need to promote more
patriotic activities through patriotic symbols. Since patriotism is an idea, it necessarily
follows that physical symbols like the flag will help to galvanize those ideas in one’s
mind. Flag ceremonies have grown out of a desire to express our patriotic ideals in
concrete form. Thus, flag ceremonies, through their appeal to the emotions, stimulate
the ideals of patriotism, moral determination, and spiritual aspiration.

Bonnie Busco, a retired elementary school teacher from Provo, Utah, used to
march her students out to the flagpole every morning to put up the flag and every
afternoon to take down the flag. Rain or shine the students did their duty, and they did not
waiver in their commitments. She reported that one student from a foreign country
literally dived to the ground once to catch the flag before it dropped. On another
occasion, she heard one student say with tears in his eyes, “Now I understand the
meaning of all this.” Patriotic symbols are powerful tools.

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In addition to the flag and flag ceremonies, seeing patriotic paintings and
documents displayed can stir in observers a pride in their country and a desire to know
more about their nation. But that curiosity must be answered by teaching the meaning
behind patriotic symbols, and lessons on what is being depicted in our historical paintings
and documents.

Today we need more patriotic fervor in our classrooms than ever before. Like the
passion of our founding fathers, the public zeal that has made America unique needs to
burn in our hearts. We need to carry on the great mission began by those noble fathers
who herald to the world that “all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among
Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed” (Declaration of
Independence, 1776).

America is unique because we have achieved what no other nation has ever
achieved; we have succeeded at the experiment began more that 200 years ago—that a
nation can be founded upon and live by principles that make all men free. Our mission is
to inspire other people that they can have this same freedom in their lands. This cannot
be accomplished through multiculturism and diversity training. Teaching patriotism in
our schools can help bring about the manifest destiny of America!

Scott Swain is the President of Roots of Freedom, a non-profit educational foundation. Roots of
Freedom educates and inspires youth, families, and all citizens to understand,
respect, and preserve for future generations the values, freedoms, and ideals established
by the Founding Fathers and fundamental documents of the United States of America.
465 East 850 South, Orem, UT 84097 (801) 224-8505 Fax: (801) 224-8545

www.rootsoffreedom.org
Copyright 2006 Roots of Freedom

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References

De Tocqueville, A. (1835). Democracy in America. Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html
Finn, C.E. (2003). Terrorists, Despots, and Democracy: What Our Children Need to
Know. Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://www.edexcellence.net/institute/publication/publication.cfm?id=316
McGuffey, W.H. (1885). McGuffey’s Sixth Eclectic Reader. Ohio: Truman and Smith
Publishing
National Assessment of Educational Progress. (1998). Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/civics/
Paine, T. (1776). Common Sense. Philadelphia: W. and T. Bradford
Richardson, J.D. (1896) A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents
Retrieved January 28, 2006 from
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/metabook?id=mppresidents
Webster, N. (1828). American Dictionary of the English Language. Republished in
Facsimile Edition by Foundation for American Christian Education. 1995.