By Daniel Buck
Wednesday, March 02, 2022
The 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.
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?
During the Cold War, under Reagan’s administration, the
National Commission on Excellence in Education wrote in the landmark
report, A Nation at Risk, 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.” They considered
discouraging math and literacy scores a crisis.
Academically, little has changed while the predominant
ideology has only worsened: Pet theories of oppression and fringe ideas about
race abound, as do arguments that equality before the law, objectivity, or even
timeliness are tools of oppression. Our educational experts want us to teach
our students that America is fundamentally broken, racist, and oppressive. They
would have students investigating only current problems without learning of our
heritage, literature, or constitutional order.
Such framings do not instill a national identity worth
defending. Putin or any other authoritarian could not ask for a better ally on
American soil than our own educational elite.
I spent a number of years teaching English as a second
language, and a number of my students came from war-torn countries. Many had
faced unspeakable horrors: fathers missing limbs, ravaged towns, murdered
mothers. Even so, when asked about their homes, they spoke of the vistas,
culture, language, food, and history. Almost all wanted to return home one day.
They loved their country despite its flaws.
G. K. Chesterton provides an illustrative example of the
necessity of patriotism in the Pimlico neighborhood of London, which he
considered a dreadful place. Were a man to hate Pimlico, his only recourse
would be to cut his throat or move away. However, were he to love the
neighborhood as a mother loves her child — not necessarily because it is
lovely, but because it is hers — he would seek its endurance and reform. Love
our country, and we will defend it precisely because it is ours.
There is much to love in this country. The ideals set
forth in our founding documents are pinnacles of political theory. Our culture,
from Mark Twain to Miles Davis, can stand toe to toe with the Great Russian
novelists and German composers. Our national parks showcase a diversity of
geography unmatched in most other nations.
Again, this mythos-building doesn’t necessitate that we
lie to our students. We can teach our students of America’s many failings while
showcasing that our reformation has come about because of, not in spite of, our
founding vision — that, for example, Confederate leaders rebuffed our founding
documents while Frederick Douglass embraced them.
While the current crisis is unlikely to escalate into war
involving our forces, at some point, America will again face a threat to its
existence. Will we meet the challenge? I worry we won’t. No one will storm a
beach to defend whatever our DEI consultants think America is.
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