Posted on by steveba2103
By DANIEL BUCK
War in Europe serves as a good reminder that we need to teach our students a vision of this country that is worth defending.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLEThe 1619 Project is making its way into classrooms, and critical theory has captured our schools of education. It’s essential to refute the precepts and facts within these progressive theories and histories. I spend time disputing the philosophical roots of critical theory in education, and National Review has done much to contest the historical accuracy of the 1619 Project.
Even so, these debates extend beyond esoteric squabbles to practical realities. As conservatives like to say, ideas have consequences. If the ideas within these radical projects — that America is built on racism, that our constitutional order is rotten to the core — a definitive consequence will be a country that lacks any resolve on the international stage. A country that doubts its own goodness will decline.
Every nation needs a mythos upon which it builds itself — not lies but a framing of its own history. When that mythos crumbles, the nation may follow. Examples abound in history. Yugoslavia, Austria-Hungary, and Czechoslovakia all broke up, in part, because they were multi-ethnic states that lacked a coherent national identity.
France at the onset of World War II is perhaps the most salient example of a country crumbling for a lack of resolve. In the interwar years, the French teachers’ union “purged” textbooks that depicted French military men favorably from schools, focusing instead on internationalism and pacifism. While France fought for four years in World War I, in World War II, it collapsed in six weeks under the pressure of the German invasion despite having what, by some calculations, should have been a superior military force. Thomas Sowell acknowledges that there are countless causes for this swift defeat, but he agrees with Charles de Gaulle when he writes that “an inner erosion of morale, patriotism, and resolution” was a major factor.
MORE IN AMERICAN HISTORY
- The 1619 False-History Project
- The Classics Are an Instrument of Freedom for Black People
- Michael Novak’s Commercial Republic
The invasion of Ukraine uniquely forewarns of such consequences at home. This conflict may not lead to our military involvement, but it reminds us that the international order is fragile. We might become entangled in a war again and currently do face countless non-military challenges; do we trust our public schools to produce citizens who are ready for that?
Our populace must have something worth defending if it is to defend itself. It is in our institutions of public education that our nation learns of its history and civics. It is here that our students will or will not develop the necessary national resolve. What story will we teach our children about ourselves?
