Teaching Students to Love America Again

R enowned classicist Werner Jaeger wrote that “education is the process by which a community preserves and transmits its physical and intellectual character.” Through education, a country introduces the next generation to its heroes, literature, music, arts, and ideals. Similar to an inheritance, a culture’s intellectual riches are passed along to children in the classroom by their teachers for them to enjoy and steward.

America began this process early. Even as the Revolutionary War raged, printers in America began to include engravings of General Washington in school primers. He was a hero for young American school children to revere as the Greeks did Achilles. As the colonists separated from Great Britain, they began to promote their own national identity.

Then a young man, Noah Webster — a prolific author of the post-revolutionary era, textbook publisher, and one half of the namesake of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary — wrote in a letter that “America must be as independent in literature as she is in politics — as famous for arts as for arms.” With the publication of an early grammar book, he declared his wish to “promote the honour and prosperity of the confederated republics of America” against the “folly, corruption, and tyranny” of Europe.

An education promoting the prosperity and artistic achievements of America is no longer the norm. Contemporary, young adult fiction has replaced American classics. History lessons cast our nation as a villain. The end goal of our schools is not to develop young, patriotic citizens but revolutionaries who wish only to deconstruct the whole system.

And that pessimism creeps into national sentiment. A sense of American pride is at a record low. Meanwhile, prospective politicians boast about wiping their hands on an American flag in lieu of a napkin.

This self-loathing is a self-evident problem. A society that does not believe in its own worth and a people that loath their own culture is a society and a people that will not last. An America that seeks self-deconstruction is, by definition, suicidal.

The curriculum and instruction in schools are not the only — or even the primary — culprits behind this sagging national pride. Broader cultural messaging, significant events from the Iraq War to the Great Recession, shifting political norms, and plenty of other factors have also fostered a notable decline in patriotism. That being said, schools could and should be one lever by which we reverse the course.

In response to self-loathing, we needn’t then adopt a completely pollyannaish view of our own history and culture. When I was a teacher, I taught English as a second language to many recent immigrants. These families fled cartel-run and war-ravaged countries. They lost family members to criminals and limbs to warlords. Even so, they loved their homes despite the violence they left. As educators, we can help our students foster a similar sense of appreciation for national ideals and America’s unique culture without being blind to our imperfections.

To foster this appreciation, we have to give students something to feel pride in with school curriculum, and America’s culture and past offer much. Our geography includes the entire diversity of the world’s ecosystems: deserts, mountains, plains, forests, swamps, ocean coasts, beaches, valleys, plateaus, lakes, rivers, glaciers, and tundras. An English teacher by trade, I think of the authors America has introduced to the world: Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Edgar Allan Poe. Likewise, Miles Davis and John Coltrane — greats of the uniquely American jazz — show the same musical brilliance as a Beethoven or Bach.

When it comes to history class, American schools can and should frame our past positively. That’s not to say we are flawless but that we are a fundamentally good country. Where humans enslaved each other for the entirety of our history, America fought a war to end that evil institution. Where past civilizations maintained inherited aristocracies and rule of the strong, America established the ideals that all men are created equal and governments derive their power from the consent of the governed. Where totalitarian movements threatened the world for the better part of a century, America fought and defeated these corrupt empires.

And all of this can sometimes be as simple as telling students that America is great. While I was an assistant principal, my school held regular morning assemblies, and I often told the student body that the proper sentiment to hold toward their country was gratitude. The students did not build our roads or construct our buildings. They did not form the businesses and innovations that led to our current prosperity. They did not write our founding documents or fight the wars that have secured our freedom. But they inherited these achievements, and it’s up to them to maintain this great civilization we call America.