Imposing Liberty upon Ourselves
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1994 <11/15>

      We were told over two hundred years ago by those who founded our country that the requirement to preserve our country was a well educated citizenry. Today our educational standards are such that high school graduates can not name them much less what they said. And it is not only the standards of teaching but that in many cases students are not even being taught the material in the first place.
      We do have a democracy and just a week ago we demonstrated it but what did we demonstrate? Exit polls in Seattle found 70% of the voters against Tom Foley their candidate would become Speaker of the House. Given the nationwide results that misunderstanding may or may not have saved Foley's job but in his district what can explain such an error?
      When I was suffering the slings and arrows of puberty we had world history, American history and civics. The courses were in that order and were one year each. The civics year covered the operation of government at all levels.
      I will grant that passing was only knowing 70% of the material at examination time. I will grant for most that was the peak of the learning curve but it was three related years of study. But it was three levels of acculturation, first the world, then the nation, and finally how the nation work.
      I find nothing wrong with that sequence nor do I find anything wrong with the content. Simply because I studied it that way does not mean there are not other ways to accomplish the same objective. But there is something we do not hear much about today, regardless of the manner in which the subjects are being covered, the objective.
      What other objective is there save to achieve the original stated and necessary objective, a well educated electorate for the preservation of our form of government? Perhaps unsurprisingly I have not heard that objective stated once in at least twenty years.
      By whatever name those courses go these days, I have heard they should have other objectives such as increasing personal self esteem, that they should increase the student's awareness of where his ancestors came from. And these ideas are accepted with an air of superiority. Those who disagree are viewed as some sort of racist low life.
      And they get away with inserting completely irrelevant purposes into the course material because we are not dedicated to the purpose of the course material in the first place. That purpose is in fact the preservation of our republican form of government as embodied in the Constitution of the United States and in the constitutions of the several states. There is no other legitimate purpose for this part of education.
      We can not maintain a strong citizen government by turning out people who know more about the land of their ancestors than they do about the culture of the United States. We can not maintain our democratic principles with a citizenry doing nothing but living their lives feeling good about themselves because they were told their ancestors did something worthwhile.
      Now there are some faced with learning the purpose of this education for the first time who might say they only want it in addition. To those I would answer I regret there is not more education toward the objective of strengthening our government. And I would not stop at these three subjects.
      We only have twelve years at most to educate our children. We only have them for a fixed number of hours in their lives where we can require them to learn what is necessary for life in this country. Education is not only for the student. It is also for the country.
      The concept of education has focused solely upon its benefits to the student. We have forgotten the student must be prepared to preserve the benefits of liberty for themselves and ourselves by preserving our country and our constitution. Knowledgeable citizen participation in our political institutions, even if only by the vote, is as essential as participation in the military in time of war.
      Yet today we squander the precious few hours we have to prepare our children for this essential task in life are squandered on things of no benefit. If students must learn to think better of themselves it it better to take the hours from arithmetic than from the history / civics. It is better to miss a play of Shakespeare than to miss the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson. Not learning the latest ideas on the right foods to eat is infinitely better than not learning the enduring thoughts upon which our country continues to operate.
      Some would hold we have no right to impose upon our children but rather they should be taught ideas from other cultures. To them I would point out they are very, very unlikely to ever get close enough to those other countries to have to care. And again, learning the cultural history of Southeast Asia takes hours away from learning the cultural history of the United States.
      The United States does have a cultural. It is a polyglot culture. It is a fluid culture. And there is no other culture like it on earth. It is uniquely ours. If only to increase its rate of change it is our duty to preserve exactly that.
      Our ability to have the culture derives directly from our political institutions. Our culture is not what it is now rather our culture is our ability to take the best from other cultures and discard the worst. We do not preserve that ability by wasting time upon the culture that people's ancestors had the wisdom to leave.
      Perhaps we can say the best thing we can teach our children is the wisdom of all of our ancestors. And their wisdom was leaving where they came from in order to come here. And for those whose ancestors came here by force we may salute the wisdom of their more recent ancestors in not taking up the many offers to pay their way back where they came from.
      This is the country we are preserving and it is time we got back to doing that and only that.