"Education is the best security for maintaing our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins," said Benjamin Franklin, an American statesman, author, inventor, diplomat, scientist, intellectual, philanthropist, and politician. "The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance."
When the Founding Fathers created this country, they all understood that the only way for our republic to continue living and for our liberty to be secured is for all Amercians to be educated in American history and civics. After all, how is our military supposed to fight for us if they do not even know what they are fighting for? How are people to elect suitable politicians if they are not educated in how our political system works? How are we to fix our immigration problem if Americans do not know why people want to come into this nation so much and why we cannot let everyone in at once?
Our country is about to take a day to celebrate the birth of our nation-- a brith that fewer and fewer children know much about. Children are no longer taught our country's history. They do not know how and why we were created. Few people talk of our naturally-born rights. Few people know how and why hundreds of thousands of young people over the years have died trying to defend this country.
How many students know that George Washington was offered a crown by his soldiers to become King of America, and turned it down? How many people know that King George of England, our enemy, called Washington the greatest man to ever live for turning down the crown, and why?
How many students know that George Washington sent a letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport in 1790? The letter welcomed them to America, and it was the first time in the history of the human race that a political system had welcomed the Jews to freely practice their faith.
How many students are not taught of the grandeur of Dwight D. Eisenhower's interstate highway system, or the absolute magnitude of the fact that the American President John F. Kennedy landed the first human being on the moon?
How foreign are the names of John Hancock, Robert Livingston, Roger Sherman, Patrick Henry, Nathaniel Hale, Abigail Adams, Frederick Douglass, and Jesse Owens to our students? How little do they know of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and Martin Luther King, Jr?
How many young Americans are capable of understanding Washington's warning on foreign entangelements, Eisenhower's warning on the military-industrial complex, and Reagan's warning on the erosion of the American spirit through ignorance?
Unless we increase the amount of civics and history being taught to our children, so they are raised as citizens who know that they and all men are endowed with rights from nature that no man can give or take away from them, so they know how our peculiar political institution came into being, then we shall soon face the threat of a nation full of people who will not be able to realize how to safeguard their liberties. Americans need to be educated about America, and not from texts that are "politically correct" or biased either towards a conservative or liberal view of American history. We need to develop a program where by the time students graduate high school they know of John Locke and natural rights, the Committee of Five that wrote our Declaration of Independence which we will soon be celebrating, the strength of character in men like George Washington, the wars we have fought both on and off of our continent--the good and the bad, the relations between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the fights for workers rights under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the trials and tribulations faced by FDR and Truman, the civil rights battles in the second half of the 20th century, and that feeling of American ingenuity that has led men to land on the moon.
Only if we are educated in our liberty will we be able to protect it.
Only if we are educated in our history will we be able to shape our future.
Only if we are educated about America will we be able to fix the problems American faces.
If we fail to address this grave problem, our future will be quite bleak.
I completely agree with you but you must not forget Hamilton, and that he should not be held up upon a pedistal because he believed that the american people were stupid and he wanted to decieve them. Most american students today believe since he is on money he did something really great, but that couldnt be further from the truth.
AKA: Concerned student
Our democracy will not survive unless there is good public education.
Most public education students know George Bush is a liar, but don't know who wrote the Gettysburg address. The teachers' union is weak because it allows mediocre, propagandist teachers to continue teaching one of our most precious assets, our children.
Jay Leno, you might have thought students were funny and uneducated when you did those "Jaywalking" pieces on your show. It turns out some of those students had received a typical public education.
And Mikey, you must be a recent "graguat" of our "first class" public education system.
Hamilton asked Washington for a national bank so there would be one currency for the nation,(every colony had their own currency) and to produce money through investment to provide infrastructure (bridges, roads, etc.).
We need to stop being so sensitive when it comes to what and how our children are taught. We have sued the creativity out of teaching. This is why no teacher will take the chance at a different approach when it comes to our kids and we see what that has led to, kids who could care less about school. Make learning interesting, fun, and most of all relevant.
Let the kids now what they will need if they want to go into manufacturing. Just seen a special on PCN about the shortage of labor and why we face this shortage. It is because schools do not teach the basics of what manufacturing is like today, they teach what it was like 50 years ago. It is now high tech. This is only one example. We also need to encourage the business community to get involved with the schools on a much larger scale then we now have and we need to pay a living wage for all kinds of work and not just for college grads. Not everyone is cut out for college and we should not expect those who do not go to college to live on substandard wages. If a job does not need a degree, then one should not be required to get the job. The only thing this accomplishes is devaluing a college degree.
Betty McLeod
PA 06
Betty327@ptd.net
It is hard for me to believe that this topic, our current education , has not garnered more attention here on U08 in the sense that it directly correlates to the present condition that we as a country find ourselves.
Most people I know who don't vote do so because they don't feel that their vote matters or will solve any of the problems they encounter in their daily lives. Regardless of their educational status, most do not have a clue as to what our Declaration of Independence, Constitution or Bill of Rights says, means, or requires of them beyond the obvious:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,
freedom of speech, of the press, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,
and even these could not be accurately identified as to which document they were a part of by a vast majority of our citizenry, with the percentages getting progressively worse as the age gets younger. I include myself in this catagory and that kinda scares the hell out of me.
It is precisely why our government has gotten away with all of its usurpations; because the people don't even realize there has been such. Most people realize that something is broken but have no idea that they are the only ones who can fix it.
Until the public is made aware and our children are proficiently taught the terms of our contract (Constitution) with our government and it's elected officials, the broken won't be fixed.
In order for our democracy to work and attain it's highest potential, we need an educated citizenry and it should be a priority for any candidate to stress the need to re-educate America of its history and its civic duty to protect the constitution from power hungry branches of government.
The only thing that I know "FOR SURE", is that nothing is..... but that doesn't circumvent an opinion!
thinkaboutit, WI06