Patriotism and Education
Should We Teach Patriotism?
America has long relied on its public schools to teach young citizens
about the workings of a self-governing democracy. But does this entail
teaching “patriotism”? Ms. Ravitch believes that it should — as long
as students learn to appreciate their country without ignoring its faults.
By Diane Ravitch
N
OT LONG AGO, I was among a
group of visitors to a public elementary school in New York City. The
school had achieved a certain renown
for its programs in the arts, and we
came to learn more about what the
staff was doing. The principal met us
at the door and soon began to speak
glowingly about the school’s accomplishments. He
mentioned that the school was attended by children
from nearly 40 different nations and cultures and that
it went to great lengths to encourage the students to
have pride in their cultural heritage. There were children in the school from Asia, Latin America, Africa,
Europe, and India. All of them were learning to appreciate the foods, dances, customs, and literature of
their native countries. Quietly, I asked him whether the
school did anything to encourage students to appreciate American culture, and he admitted with embarrassment that it did not.
This seems to me a great paradox in American public education today. Educators believe that children’s
self-esteem is firmly linked to a positive relationship
to their ancestral culture but not to the culture of the
country in which they live and are citizens of and in
which they will one day raise a family, earn a living,
and participate in elections. How strange to teach a student born in this country to be proud of his parents’
or grandparents’ land of birth but not of his or her
DIANE RAVITCH is a research professor at New York University;
a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif.; a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington,
D.C.; and a graduate of the Houston public schools. She is the
author of The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict
What Students Learn (Knopf, 2003) and co-editor, with Michael
Ravitch, of The English Reader (Oxford University Press, 2006).
own. Or to teach a student whose family fled to this
country from a tyrannical regime or from dire poverty
to identify with that nation rather than with the one
that gave the family refuge.
The extent to which we abhor or admire patriotism
in the schools depends on how it is taught. If we teach
it narrowly as jingoistic, uncritical self-praise of our nation, then such instruction is wrong. It would be indoctrination rather than education. If, however, we
teach civic education and define patriotism as a respectful understanding and appreciation of the principles
and practices of democratic self-government, then patriotism should be woven through the daily life and
teachings of the public schools.
Until the last generation, American public schools
took the teaching of patriotism very seriously. The
school day began with the Pledge of Allegiance, every
classroom displayed an American flag, the flag was
raised each day over the school, and students learned
the songs of the American civil religion — the national anthem, “God Bless America,” “Columbia, the
Gem of the Ocean,” “America the Beautiful,” “My
Country, ’Tis of Thee,” etc. Since the earliest days of
public education, the schools were expected to teach
students about the history, culture, and symbols of
America and to encourage them to feel part of the nation. If anything, the public schools in the United
States were generally viewed by the public as an institutional expression of national pride, because they were
considered the quintessential governmental instrument
for building a strong and vibrant national community.
It was understood that students and families came from
a wide variety of national and ethnic origins, and the
public schools were expected to teach everyone about
the duties and privileges of citizenship in the United
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States. The public schools were to instruct students
about voting and jury duty, about how the government
works, and about national ideals and aspirations.
In many ways, American schools were very much
like the state schools of every other nation, which invariably teach students to respect the larger community that supplies and funds their education. No state
system teaches its children to despise their own government. But American schools probably went further
in their patriotic spirit than the schools of other nations, for two reasons. First, other nations are based
on ties of blood or religion, but the United States is a
social creation, evolving not from common inherited
features but from a shared adherence to the democrat-
ic ideology embedded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The public schools were
expected to help forge the American people anew in
each generation by teaching children about the nature
and workings of democratic self-government. Second,
the public school is itself an expression of the nation’s
democratic ideology, a vehicle created to realize the
nation’s belief in individualism, self-improvement, and
progress. It was in the public schools that students not
only would learn what it meant to be an American but
would gain the education necessary to make their way
in an open society, one in which rank and privilege
were less important than talent and merit. If the public schools were ever to abandon their role as an in-
Teaching Patriotism — with Conviction
Americans will debate for many years to come the causes and implications of the September 11
attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as the foiled attack that led to the crash of
United Airlines Flight 93 in a Pennsylvania field. Between the first and second “anniversaries” of
9/11, another development deepened our awareness of the dangerous world we inhabit and of America’s role therein — the successful war to liberate Iraq from its dictator and his murderous regime. Of course, the consequences
— and contentiousness — of that conflict continue to resonate daily in newspaper headlines and on the evening
news. In these challenging times, educators rightly wonder about their proper role. What should they teach young
Americans? How should they prepare tomorrow’s citizenry? What is most important for students to learn?
These are weighty questions, and there is every reason to expect them to linger. But it is now clearer than ever that,
if we wish to prepare our children for unforeseen future threats and conflicts, we must arm them with lessons from
history and civics that help them learn from the victories and setbacks of their predecessors, lessons that, in Jefferson’s words, “enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.”
Jefferson was right when he laid upon education the grave assignment of equipping tomorrow’s adults with the knowledge, values, judgment, and critical faculties to determine for themselves what “will secure or endanger” their freedom and their country’s well-being. The U.S. Supreme Court was right, half a century ago, when, in the epoch-shaping
Brown decision, it declared education to be “the very foundation of good citizenship.”
Teachers know this better than anyone, and many need no help or advice in fulfilling their responsibility. They’re
knowledgeable, savvy, creative, caring, and — may I say it? — patriotic, as many fine teachers have always been.
They love our country and the ideals for which it stands. Teachers must communicate to their students the crucial
lessons from history and civics that our children most need to learn. The events of 9/11 and the war on terrorism that
has followed create a powerful opportunity to teach our daughters and sons about heroes and villains, freedom and repression, hatred and compassion, democracy and theocracy, civic virtue and vice.
On 10 April 2003, David McCullough told a Senate committee, “We are raising a generation of people who are
historically illiterate. . . . We can’t function in a society,” he continued, “if we don’t know who we are and where we
came from.” The solemn duty of all educators is to make certain that all our children know who they are. Part of that can
be accomplished by teaching them about America’s Founders, about their ideals, and about the character, courage,
vision, and tenacity with which they acted. From that inspiring history, true patriotism cannot help but grow. K
CHESTER E. FINN, JR., is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, Washington, D.C.
By Chester E. Finn, Jr.
580
PHI DELTA KAPPAN
strument of democratic ideology, they would risk losing
their place in the American imagination as well as their
claim on the public purse.
Obviously, if teaching patriotism degenerates into
vulgar national boasting and a mandate for conformity, then it has failed in teaching the Constitution. For
an essential part of the promise of the democratic ideology involves teaching children about the rights of a
free people, including the rights of free speech, free expression, and dissent. It is impossible to teach American history without recognizing the important roles
played by outsiders, dissenters, and critics, who often
turned out to be visionary and prescient in their rejection of the status quo.
The teaching of patriotism in American schools
should not be a separate subject. There should not be
time set aside for instruction in patriotism. Students
who have a solid civic education will study the ideas
and institutions of the Founders and learn how democratic institutions work, where they falter, and how
they can be strengthened. Students who study American history will learn about the sacrifices of previous
generations who sought to safeguard our liberties and
improve our society, and they will
learn about the men and women of all
races and backgrounds who struggled
to create a land of freedom, justice,
and opportunity. Students must
learn too about the failings of our
democracy, about the denials of freedom and justice that blight our history.
But to deprive students of an
education that allows them to see
themselves as part of this land and its
history and culture would be a crying shame. Just as students must
learn to value themselves as individuals, to value their families, and to
value their community, so too
should they learn to value the nation
of which they are citizens. To love
one’s country does not require one to
ignore its faults. To love one’s country does not require one to dismiss
the virtues of other countries. Indeed, those who are patriotic about
their own country tend to respect
those who live elsewhere and also
love their respective countries. Love
of country may mean love of place, love of the landscape and the people, love of what is familiar. Surely
people who have been persecuted may be excused for
not having an attachment to their homeland. But for
most of us, whatever place we call home and whatever our nationality, Sir Walter Scott’s words ring
true:
Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
“This is my own, my native land!”
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.
K
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