President Trump is right- American students need a patriotic curriculum

I rarely find myself agreeing with President Trump about anything, much less on the subject of education, but he is absolutely right about the need for American schools to begin teaching a patriotic curriculum.

A patriotic curriculum has been desperately needed in our public schools for a long time. With the continued emphasis on teaching math and reading (and more recently, science) skills with a preference for the type of skills needed to pass poorly written standardized tests, our history and our knowledge of government have long since fallen by the wayside.

So yes, we absolutely need to refocus our educational system.

We have to make the changes that are necessary to remind students of what the United States of America is supposed to be and the values that our flag represents, the values that our military has fought to uphold and the values for which so many have sacrificed their lives.

I have some suggestions for some of the facts and concepts that should be included in this curriculum.

1. The Truman Doctrine and NATO

Students should be aware of the importance of President Harry S. Truman's decision to prevent the further spread of Soviet influence and communism in Europe and the key to doing that was the creation of NATO. 

This established the foreign policy that has been successful for the United States for three-quarters of a century. A key to the alliance is Article 5, which states that if one country is attacked, the others will come to its defense. That article has been invoked only one time- when terrorists attacked the United States on 9-11.  

Students need to know the importance this strategic alliance and friendship has played in protecting our interests here and abroad and the role it played in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

2. Team of Rivals

If our young people are learning valuable lessons about leadership, one need look no further than the method Abraham Lincoln used to construct his cabinet. He included people who had been staunch opponents with two goals- these were men who had knowledge and abilities that made them valuable additions to the leadership team and it brought them into the fold instead of opposing it from outside.

While teaching the concept of leadership, it is important to stress that our leaders need to surround themselves not only with the best people available, but also with those who have the courage to tell them when they are wrong and to have an open mind to points of view that differ from their own.

3. World War II on the Homefront

History has long been taught in terms of politics and battles and while we recognize the importance of the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, some important lessons should be taught about what was going on in the U. S. during the Second World War.

Franklin D. Roosevelt trusted that American citizens could handle troubling news and would not resort to panic. He conveyed a spirit of optimism while never sugarcoating the challenges that we faced.

And indeed, Americans persevered through the years of war.

Young men were drafted from every family and word arrived every day of soldiers who had made the ultimate sacrifice or who had been wounded in battle.

At home, Americans, not happily, but willingly, dealt with the rationing of many things- cars, bicycles, rubber, gasoline, sugar, coffee, meat, butter, cheese and other items, to help their country. Americans planted victory gardens to increase the food supply and bought war bonds to finance the military effort.

It was a sense of shared sacrifice. Americans did what they could to support their country and did not whine about the freedoms that were being taken away from them because they were temporarily inconvenienced.

The role that mindless prejudice against those who are different also was sanctioned by our government when FDR authorized the internment of approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans fearing their loyalty would be to Japan and not to the U. S.

No such action was ever taken against German-Americans or Italian-Americans though we were also at war with Germany and Italy.

Of course, those people had similar complexions to the majority of Americans at that time.

The First Amendment

While we have many elected officials who seem to think that the Bill of Rights begins (and ends) with the Second Amendment, there are many reasons why the First Amendment is number one.

Citizens have the freedom of speech, the right to petition and the right to assemble and address grievances.

The right to peaceably assemble is enshrined in the amendment and no greater examples of its use can be found than during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s.

Peaceful protests, including such seminal events as the March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery marches, provide instructive lessons on how citizen participation can become a catalyst for change.

Also instructive are what can happen when leaders overreact and attempt to curtail those freedoms. Consider Bull Conner's response on Bloody Sunday when he ordered an attack on John Lewis and those marching from Selma to Montgomery for voting rights, using vicious dogs and industrial strength water hoses and beating the protesters.

Thanks to another provision of the First Amendment, the freedom of the press, people were able to see the violence being perpetrated on their television screens against people who only wanted the right to vote and fully participate in the decisions affecting them and their country.

The importance of freedom of the press should be emphasized in our curriculum. It is important that students realize that journalists are not there to serve as cheerleaders for our elected leaders, but there to deliver what Carl Bernstein calls "the best available version of the truth."

If they are doing their job properly, our elected leaders will be unhappy with them much of the time. Consider John F. Kennedy's famous decision to cancel his subscription to the New York Herald Tribune when he became fed up with what he considered to be their negative coverage of his administration.

In the 1960 movie, Inherit the Wind, Gene Kelly, playing a newspaperman modeled after the legendary H. L. Mencken, said, "It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." Though Mencken himself never said it, that statement provides an excellent idea of the proper role of a journalist- to represent the average reader and taxpayer and look out for his or her interest. While that does not always necessarily mean "afflicting the comfortable," that striving for the truth and not just what makes people feel good, is a vital part of our way of life and should be stressed in any curriculum.

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Those are just a few concepts that should be included if we ever opt for a patriotic curriculum.

An ideal curriculum would also explain to students that reading a book is a far better way to study history than reading the inscription on a statue.

And perhaps we could teach about leaders such as President Eisenhower, who steered this country through the construction of our interstate highway system and who considered infrastructure to be more than just an oft-repeated theme week. 

Eisenhower's adherence to the rule of order is also worthy of study. Eisenhower was no fan of the U. S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision and in one of the most shameful decisions of his presidency, never responded to Mamie Till's letter begging him to do something about the brutal murder of her son, Emmett. Civil rights were outside of President Eisenhower's comfort zone, but when Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus defied the court order to integrate Central High School in Little Rock in 1957, Eisenhower sent the National Guard to make sure the nine African-American students could attend classes.

In other words, Eisenhower did what a president is supposed to do. He developed a fervent and deep respect for the rule of law while earning his spurs in the military. Recent history would indicate spurs can be used for other purposes.

And perhaps we could teach something of the leadership concept shown by another Republican president, Ronald Reagan, who used a hard line approach to dealing with the Soviet Union that led to a surprising friendship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union during the George H. W. Bush Administration.

Reagan developed a friendship, but importantly, never fell in love with Gorbachev.

So in conclusion, President Trump is absolutely right. It is a time for a patriotic education, one that reveres 1776, while understanding that the men who wrote it, great leaders that they were, were not perfect. At the same time, there is absolutely no reason why a patriotic curriculum would not include information from the 1619 Project. One does not have to totally accept what it says, but it is important to realize just how much has been done to whitewash American history.

The most important thing is to make sure that our future voters and leaders can develop a depth of knowledge so they will elect leaders who represent a shared vision of an America that realizes it has always been great and does not repeat its past mistakes in order to be "great again," an America that celebrates its diversity and does not fear and demonize those whose political viewpoints are different or those whose skin color is not the same shade.

It would be truly wonderful if Donald Trump's call for a patriotic curriculum could be something that could lead to a better educated America, one that would never elect a man like Donald Trump president again.