Teaching the essentials

According to the Washington Post, “The start of the war on terrorism proved an unexpected tonic for education reform.” The Post cites a White House aide who said, “I think [congressional education negotiators] saw it as a way they could demonstrate to the country that Congress had not been immobilized.” Apparently, the nation lives in fear that terrorists will intimidate the people’s representatives away from the now rapidly resuming task of federal over-reaching executed in the name of reform. Take heart, oh people! Our politicians will not be dissuaded from expanding state power at the expense of liberty.

There are those, of course, who would rank a “mobilized Congress” high on the list of terrorizing sights. Heaven help us when Ted Kennedy partners with “compassionate conservatives” in issuing marching orders for the education bureaucracy to “leave no child behind.” War tends to increase national governmental power – not only in matters directly related to the conflict, but also in vastly broader realms of our common life. In a season of national pride and solidarity, advocates of expanded government power tend to find rich fields offering “targets of opportunity.” Education is such a field, and in the legislation passed last week, it has received a direct hit.

That’s the bad news, as I discussed last week. The good news is that federal pressure and control will be applied slowly, and curricular pressure will be applied only indirectly through a new testing regime that will serve as a benchmark for the states’ own measures, not as the basis for direct federal control. Accordingly, much state autonomy will actually remain – if the states and their citizenry vigorously claim and exercise it.

Better still, rising up from below to meet the new federal activism is a range of state and local initiatives that will have significant effect in preserving local autonomy in education. This is particularly true in the realm of civic education which, as Jefferson pointed out, is – after elementary literacy and arithmetic – the chief purpose of education.

And here, the news from the states is very positive. Ebbing, flowing, but generally advancing around the country is a movement to restore to the education of our children an effective and formative exposure to their true civic heritage as Americans. This is a project that can mitigate much of the servile effect of high-dollar federal educational meddling. And it is a reform that genuinely and fruitfully draws on the spirit of national resolve prompted by the current international conflict.

The reforms we should pursue can be divided into three steps. First, Declaration recitation bills should be encouraged, such as those recently passed in Texas and defeated in New Jersey. The daily recitation of the Declaration in our country’s schools would be a simple and effective beachhead for the restoration of real civics education. Our children would experience concretely the fact that the Declaration is considered vital to their daily lives, and this experience would point naturally and effectively toward a more substantial curricular treatment of the principles and history of American liberty.

Second, commitment to civics education must be embodied in principled state standards and in corresponding materials for substantive instruction in Declaration principles. This is appropriately included, when possible, in the same legislation that establishes the recitation of the Declaration. The “Founding of America” bill in Ohio, to be voted on next year, does just that.

Finally, standards and officially approved materials must be effectively used in the classroom. This is the particular challenge, and opportunity, for local educational authorities – beginning with parents. Wherever progress is made in including real American civics in the law and standards of public education, citizens and local educational authorities must make the most of their opportunity to educate not “labor force participants” or mindless “tolerators” of “diversity,” but citizens.

We would do well to imitate the zeal of the liberal ideologues whose influence we are seeking to replace. They understand that the standards and materials used in teaching young Americans about America are not trophies to be collected, but tools to be used in the formation of young souls, and they set about their task with energy and determination whenever they see the chance. We should be no less energetic and determined in the task of reclaiming and reshaping the souls of our young people for the cause of true national virtue.

The new consensus in Washington for federal educational activism is indeed bad news. But as with all bad news, what finally matters is our response. A world made safe from organized terror will more than redeem the pain of Sept. 11. And a renewed and increased citizen devotion to real civic education in response to last week’s deformation of national education policy will do much to overcome the damage even of so ill-conceived a law.