The Quiet Power of Our Sacred Honor

Nov 2, 2010
Elizabeth Scalia

A friend who teaches high school Social Studies recently lamented to me that her students come up from middle school with such a vague idea of what has made America unique among nations since its founding—and what its character has meant to the rest of the world—that she is forced almost to play Devil’s Advocate against the nation’s own history, in order to entice them to its defense.

It is a backwards way of teaching, she admits. Over the past several decades the social and historical curriculum has reduced the time spent on civics and founding documents in order to amplify the broadly social aspects of American history. As a result, students have a solid grasp of the fact that the nation is imperfect and that the citizenry has worked to address those imperfections. Less clear to them, however, is how honorable-in-intention America has been, from the writing of the Declaration of Independence until today, and why that intention has mattered in history.

Her students have no sense of American “identity” as a national and united force not just against certain ideas, but for others. They don’t understand why they should think any better of America than any other nation, “but get them to justify the Berlin Airlift,” she says, “and then you see the lightbulbs go on, and suddenly they become excited. Wow, America sacrificed her own blood, her own resources, in order to save the people they defeated! That’s cool! the rest image

Our children and young adults have watched adult America veer incautiously leftward, like a driver slipping lanes because he’s been distracted by a text message; and we will not emerge from that mistake unscathed. But we can make this a teachable moment for our students and ourselves; if we move forward with quiet resolve and honorable intentions we may yet manage to rescue our representative republic from the collision force of a generation that has been bearing down and driving hard for years, against everything that came before itself.