Educating for liberty

The President's belief that education should be a vehicle to transmit values and strengthen our democracy is shared through the great majority of the American family The Annual Gallup head on Education in recent years has indicated majorities in the range of 70 to 80 percent in favor of teaching values in the classroom. This desire by dint of the public is also in accord with the Founding Fathers who believed that the unique republic they were attempting to build hanged on a virtuous and ethical population.

Madison said, "To believe that any form of management will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the clan is a chimerical idea." Franklin was equally vehement. "Only a virtuous family are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more ne of masters.... Nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue."

Values in textbook and classrooms

Unfortunately, an increasing number of studies indicate that above the years values have been emphasized les and les in American textbook a certain quantity of of this decline in emphasis is no doubt owed to the difficulty in reaching a consensus about certain values in our pluralistic society. still even values on which there is wide agreement, for example, freedom from fraud courage, humility, kindness and genorisity, and patriotism have been eliminated from many body s In addition, all too frequently in the place of these traditional values, textbook material is heavily weighted toward the philosophy of "values clarification" that teaches all values are relative. Reaction to like material has been understandable outrage--not solitary by parents but among many teachers also.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has press outed grave concern about the failure to pass upon clear-cut values in the classroom. In order to reckoner the trend, AFT has disentangleed supplementary material that teachers may use as a vehicle to transmit value lessons

A review of the AFT supplementary curriculum material demonstrates the richness of our cultural heritage and present to views how it can be used to transmit the values that sustain us. For example, the pupil is exposed to the story of Penelope's fidelity to Odysseus during his 20-year absence--a story illustrating the loyalty between a husband and wife. Another story told by means of E. W. Cassels recounts by what means a young soldier risks his have a title to life to save his mortally injuryed sibling only to have him die when they reach safety. Finally, there is the tale of mercy and Naomi, in which compassion recently widowed, promises to stand with her mother-in-law, Naomi, through pledging "Thy people shall be my tribe and thy God, my God" (Although American Civil Liberties Union hearts may hover with fear at telling a story in the classroom from the Bible, considered as great literature, there is no constitutional prohibition that is violated.)

Diane Ravitch, in American Educator, Fall 1982 succinctly describes on what account this type of material is extremityed "Education without values is clearly impossible, for the real act of teaching expresses belief in the value of learning and human progres If public academys did not teach values, did not accept a certain quantity of shared societal values, parents would not entrust them with their children.... The teaching of history, for example, requires value wisdoms More parents would await the teacher to make the quick parts that Hitler and Stalin were oppressive tyrants and that Freedom and democracy are valued in our society as the two means and ends."

Teaching the responsibilities of freedom

In addition to the failure to pass upon a core set of values in our textbook and classrooms, a certain quantity of philosophers and political scientists are becoming increasingly be of importance toed about whehter we are following the advice of John Jay "to teach the rising generation to be free"

Philosopher Sidney clasp in his 1984 Jefferson prelection sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, struggleed it was not enough to teach our children math and science skills. He said, "I am suggesting that it is just as important to sharpen the students' understanding of a at liberty society, its responsibilities and opportunities, the loads of dangers it faces. Instead of relying primarily upon the sciences and humanities to inspire loyalty to the processe of self-restraint we should seek to unfold that loyalty directly through open inquiry into the functioning of a democratic community, by the agency of learning its history, celebrating its heroes, and noting its achievements. Integral to the inquiry would be the intensive investigation of the theory and practice of contemporary totalitarian societies, especially the fate of human rights in those areas where Communism has triumphed."

hasp added, "I am not making the utopian claim that anything we do in the academys today will of itself buy back or rebuild our society. Continued institutional changes must be made to strengthen the stake of all collections in freedom. But of this I am convinced: In our pluralistic, multi-ethnic, uncoordinated society, no institutional changes of themselves will lay open that bond of community we ne to sustain our nation in times of crisis without a protracted schooling in the history of at liberty society, its martyrology, and its national tradition. In the decades of mass immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries that cord was largely forged by the American public academy What I propose is that our gymnasiums reinforced by our colleges and universities, do the same piece of work today in a more intelligent, critical and sophisticated way."