Election '10; Remember & Repeat

A friend who teaches high school Social Studies recently lamented to me that her students come up from middle school with such a vague idea of what has made America unique among nations since its founding–or what its character has meant to the rest of the world–that she is forced to almost play Devil’s Advocate against the nation’s own history, in order to entice them toward its defense.

It’s kind of a backwards way of teaching, she admits. Over the past several decades the social/historical curriculum has reduced the time spent on civics and founding documents in order to amplify the broadly social aspects of American history. As a result, students have a solid grasp of the fact that the nation is imperfect and that the citizenry has worked to address those imperfections to good effect. Less clear to them, however, is how honorable-in-intention America has been, from the writing of the Declaration of Independence until today, and why that “honor” has mattered in history.

Teaching about social and economic movements is good and necessary; the underlying message–that individuals of consciences can bring about great change–is something our children need to know. My friend complains however, that her students have no sense of American “identity” as a national and united force not just against certain ideas, but for others. These students vaguely recollect the attacks of 9/11; the War on Terror is mostly shrugged off as rhetoric. They don’t understand why they should think any better of America than any other nation, “but get them to justify the Berlin Airlift,” she says, “and then you see the lightbulbs go on, and suddenly they become excited. Wow, America sacrificed her own blood, her own resources, in order to save the people they defeated! That’s cool!

Finally, “our sacred honor” becomes something meaningful to the students; it is the thing that has made manifest the “exceptional and indispensable nation.”

After too much delay, America is finally beginning to scrutinize its complacent and under-achieving public schools system; reforms are needed with regards to curriculum, attendance and testing for the students, and tenure, salaries, benefits, and performance for teachers. But we do not have to wait while politicians, assemblies and unions debate and delay. Education begins at home and we can begin–today, with this very election–to teach our children about the spirit of honor, innovation and independence that formed the nation and (even divided as we are) still sustains it.

While we may criticize a politician or argue against a policy, we must get back to stressing the importance of a loyal opposition and respectful debate as a means of movement over monopoly. We must demonstrate that honor and freedom and truth are not theories but actual, strengthening virtues; they are not just real, they are Eternal.

We must not be afraid to remind our students that as imperfect as America may be, this is still the land to which–in ways large or small–every free nation owes its current liberty. This is the nation that has routinely sent its idealistic young off to foreign lands–to die there–not for empire, not for real-estate, but for the protection and advancement of that unseen thing that is freedom, the strengthener of the human spirit, the burnisher of human potential. Irony-slaves and cynics aside, aside, this is still the nation toward which millions of creative or industrious people will swim; it is the nation to which the oppressed call out for rescue and relief.

Our children must learn that the American Presidency is, like a papacy or a monarchy, larger than the person who occupies the office, and that it is noble. The American President emancipated a much-sinned against part of humanity, when too many would not. The American President has used the big stick to overthrow tyrants; the American President has put his airmen to use to keep his vanquished enemies from starving in a brutal winter, he has used his navy to bring aid after tsunami. The American President has dreamed great space voyages into reality, has opened closed markets, has encouraged a people to tear down walls. The American President has envisioned millions of people raising purple fingertips to the sky, and made it so.

The American President says, “not on my watch,” and the world exhales in relief; our children need to know that.

The, we must repeat, over and over, that liberty is the means by which we created creatures are meant to live and to grow and be; that liberty lives in truth spoken forthrightly, and not in circuitous spin; that liberty thrives where people can speak without fear of injury or reprisals; liberty is sustained only when the press is free and unencumbered – detached from events rather than entwined in them; liberty breathes when people refuse to be intimidated into silence or acquiescence, whether in the workplace or within the community.

Liberty is the fragile thing that diminishes whenever one refuses to acclaim it for oneself.

In between all of those repetitions, we must do something else, if we are to keep our perspective: we are going to have to turn away from our distractions – the television, the radio, the talk-shows, the trends and tweets. We will have to turn away from these empty things–make them smaller in our lives–in order to let in a little bit of unfamiliar quiet.

A good musician knows that music is not created only by playing notes, but by understanding the spaces between the notes, and their value. Just so, it will not be enough to simply repeat what is true–if that is all we do, it will only add to the din–there must also be silence.

The overstimulation of our senses has severely dulled our internal sensors. For a while we lost our bearings and our boundaries so profoundly that we were no longer guarded, interiorly, against scam-artists and tricksters. Now, we must guard against becoming too guarded, too closed for our own good.

We have to get those our bearings rightly centered, and reconnect with our “gut instincts,” which are there for a reason. One way to do that is through prayer, meditation and contemplation. Blaise Pascal wrote, “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

There is power there; no force can stand against it. Not even the force of a generation bearing down and driving hard against everything that came before itself.