Teaching Students to Love America: They Inherit Its Achievements, and Must Maintain This Great Civilization

Renowned 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.

About the Author

Daniel Buck

Daniel Buck is a research fellow and the director of the Conservative Education Reform Network at the American Enterprise Institute.

Renowned 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.