The War on Patriotism
The War on Patriotism
A storm has broken out over what approach teachers should take to the upcoming anniversary of September 11. Twenty years ago an influential report by a national commission entitled "A Nation at Risk" concluded that "If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war." Since then the picture has hardly changed. In fact, it has--despite a few bright spots like the establishment of a small number of charter schools and voucher plans, fought all the way by the education establishment--steadily gotten worse.
The current recommendations of the educrats--the professoriat, the schools of education where they hold forth and train other teachers, and the teachers' unions--show why. According to the Natioal Education Association, the largest and most influential of the teachers' unions, teachers should take care not to assign blame--except perhaps to ourselves. It is our failure to exercise a high enough degree of tolerance and empathy toward other cultures that is at fault, and the answer is a greater emphasis on diversity and multiculturalism. We should be non-judgemental--except about the U.S.
A "feel-good curriculum" that has made self-esteem a greater concern for teachers than the mastery of any body of skills or knowledge to base it on, has taken over the schools as a system once designed to transmit the civic culture has been transformed into a means of changing it. The schools have been turned into agencies for social change with egalitarianism replacing excellence as their mission.
Thus the National Association of School Psychologists counsels teachers: "Do not suggest any group is responsible" for the terrorist attack of September 11, and joins the NEA and the rest of the education establishment in emphasizing students' feelings. Never mind what they know as long as they feel good about themselves and empathize with the feelings of others.
Into this morass of misplaced therapy-think steps the Fordham Foundation, a clear voice of reason in a muddled world. A think tank that the New York Times and Washington Post cannot mention without labeling it "conservative" or "right wing" (they never refer to the NEA as radical or left wing), it has posted on its web siteFordham Foundation an alternative response to September 11 and suggestions for ways to stress patriotism, freedom and democracy--American values--without succumbing to bigotry or hysteria. The Fordham Foundation's president, Chester E. Finn Jr., has assembled a group of statements by thoughtful contributers under the heading "What Our Children Need to Know" that dares to suggest that understanding our own culture--American rights and freedoms, how they orginated and how they operate--should be the real heart of a teaching approach to September 11. It should be required reading for every teacher in America.
--Guest blogger Rita Kramer is author of Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America's Teachers.
