A BRIEF REFLECTION ON CIVIC EDUCATION AND CONSTITUTION DAY
by Jason Caros | September 16, 2023
Will love of country make a comeback? In a 2023 National Opinion Research Center/Wall Street Journal survey, researchers found that only 38% of Americans say patriotism is “very important” to them, down from 70% who said the same in 1998. In 2020, a Harvard Institute of Politics survey found that less than half of 18 to 29-year-olds said they were very proud or somewhat proud to be an American (the rest said they were ambivalent, somewhat embarrassed or very embarrassed).
To anyone with eyes to see, the last handful of years have been rough ones when it comes to national unity and pride in country. We’ve all likely seen it on the news, heard about it from others, and perhaps experienced it in person. I’ve been around for a while and I cannot remember an extended patch of time when morale and confidence in our nation’s future was so low. Perhaps this is cyclical, perhaps it's related to COVID, perhaps it has to do with large-scale global economic changes that impact us, unbeknownst to us, or perhaps it is something else. Whatever it is, many of us have experienced it and survey after survey illustrate that pride in our country has been lower in recent years.
As a long-time educator, I can say with confidence that our culture’s declining education experience has certainly impacted our national outlook. All in all, schools across the country are not great. I don’t need to describe our nation’s low literacy and mathematics rates, various troubles in schools related to violence, etc., as these are often reported in the news, but sadly, there have been two parts of our schooling experience that we can pinpoint as having been sorely lacking over the last generation that are closely connected to our affection for country—good instruction in history and in civics. If you don’t know about your country’s past, good and bad, and if you do not understand the principles that undergird and propel it, you are likely to believe anything negative someone tells you about it, or you become an apathetic spectator within it.
While our nation has its share of warts, it also has tremendous merits that have greatly impacted freedom and prosperity the world over. While we, as a people, have accomplished much, one of the things that makes this land worthy of praise is our view that is described in the beginning of the U.S. Constitution, the Preamble, specifically, which says: “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice…” It is an acknowledgement that we are flawed as humans. As a culture, we err. But, one constant about the people of this land is that we continually self-assess ourselves, we know we are a work in progress, and we strive for improvement.
If one has any good sense of the arc of history and has learned about the fundamentals of civilizations, then he or she knows what a great leap forward our nation’s liberty principles have moved humanity. These principles are wonderfully outlined in the opening paragraphs of our Declaration of Independence and put into practice through the longest-continually used constitution on the planet, The Constitution of the United States. Abraham Lincoln once explained the relationship between these two seminal documents in a striking way. In what is known today as “Fragment on the Constitution and Union," President Lincoln used a well-known allusion in his time to describe the Declaration as an apple of gold and the Constitution as a picture of silver framing it. The two needed each other just like we need those principles and our Constitution to flourish today.
While Constitution Day (September 17th) is only a single day annual commemoration, it is important that our children know our history, they understand our constitution and contribute, as citizens, to ensure that the people we elect to serve us in local, state and national offices govern according to the Constitution because it safeguards our liberties and helps to enable us to live well and enjoy happy lives. This is, after all, the Constitution’s main purpose.
As for schools, well done to the schools whose faculty helps instill in children a sense of wonder and a desire to learn for its own sake. Kudos to the schools that take pride in teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum that includes instruction about the history of our nation and our shared civic heritage. Praise goes to the schools that are living up to the grave responsibilities of their purpose, which ought to be focused on leading our young ones in pursuit of the good, true, and beautiful, and to help form them into well-informed and noble citizens.
Returning to love of country, two weekends ago I was encouraged when I watched two football games, one collegiate and one NFL, that featured beautiful renditions of The National Anthem before huge crowds in Tallahassee, FL and in NYC—in both cases the fans displayed great appreciation for it. Keeping in mind that the Monday following was Patriot Day, and the next Sunday would be Constitution Day, I thought to myself that perhaps these are glimmers of a hope…
Jason Caros is a husband, father and classical school headmaster.