How Schools Can Foster Patriotism

I began my career in education teaching English as a second language to students who had just immigrated to the United States. Many came from war-torn or cartel-controlled countries. Others had spent years in refugee camps before gaining asylum in the U.S. A young boy’s father had lost an arm to a machete and another young man his mother to the cartels.

Counterintuitively, almost every single one of them spoke of their home country with reverence. They had every reason to hate the corruption and violence whence they came. Nevertheless, they spoke longingly of the vistas, food, music, and what their nations could and should be. They longed to return.

Conversely, in the United States, only 38 percent of respondents to a Wall Street Journal poll last year deemed a sense of patriotism important, down from 70 percent of respondents in 1998. An amusing poll from the U.S. News and World Report found that, where most individuals rate their country higher than other nations do, we rank ourselves far more critically. Most countries are self-assured. We are uniquely self-loathing.

To counter this tendency, the 2024 Republican Platform suggests that schools must “promote love of country.” Few would truly contest that sentiment. But how?

A teacher declaring American exceptionalism from the lectern will accomplish little more than motivational posters hanging around buildings proclaiming that “kindness is cool.” Fostering a love of country requires more. Patriotism will result from the curriculum and framing of instruction itself.

First, we must give our students something to love. A mother loves her child simply because the son or daughter is hers, but ask any loving parents, and they’ll quickly begin to ramble about their child’s laugh, accomplishments, sense of humor, hobbies, or touching anecdotes.

Currently, American curricula emphasize the contemporary and supposedly “relevant.” Children read books — invariably modern young-adult fiction — that interest them. They research modern issues and debates in “action civics.” They learn about other cultures. Where is American heritage?

An English teacher by trade, my mind jumps first to literature. American schools can and should cover our literary past. It’s hard not to love Mark Twain’s anti-elitist, crass vernacular — a rebuke to stuffy, European pretensions. From abolitionism to the end of segregation, when civil rights marched across the West, many of its greatest rhetoricians were American. Poe’s gothic tales rival the Greeks in their mythological weight.

Our distinction extends beyond literature. Anyone who has taken a road trip can tell of our uniquely variable geography, ranging from plains to mountains to rolling hills to sea towns. Throughout history, our decisive actions stymied various stripes of totalitarianism. One of the most sophisticated genres of music, jazz, emerged on our shores. Miles Davis and John Coltrane can stand toe-to-toe with Beethoven and Bach.

And of course, this curriculum of American inclusion would be remiss without a robust civics education. How can the next generation appreciate American exceptionalism if they do not understand the political wisdom and prudence written into our Constitution? It’s difficult for our populace to feel gratitude toward our country when half of Americans can’t even name all three branches of government.

Second, but perhaps more important, is the framing of American history. It’s entirely possible to include all of the above in our curriculum — history, geography, literary and artistic history, civics, all of it — and still portray America as the villain in the story. Our educational experts want our children to learn that equality before the law, objectivity, or even timeliness are tools of oppression, that American ideals are lies, and that instead we’re built on broken, racist, oppressive foundations.

We needn’t lie to our students about our very real failings: slavery, segregation, evils that leave a blot on our record. But notably, where segregationists rebuffed our founding ideals, civil-rights leaders and abolitionists alike embraced them. We’re a great, albeit imperfect nation that is ever living up to but never quite reaching its ideals. This is the framing that students need — and it’s the accurate one to boot.

Philosopher G. K. Chesterton made a compelling case for this love of country in his theological classic Orthodoxy: “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.” In other words, great societies develop because individuals believe in its mission and foster it toward greatness.

And Chesterton continues on to explain exactly what this sentiment entails. He uses the then-impoverished neighborhood of Pimlico in London as an example. If a resident hated this area, he’d either “cut his throat or move.” If he had an uncritical approval of the area, then it “will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.” Instead, if residents “loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence.”

It’s an unfortunate reality that a national policy platform needs to assert the need for schools to inculcate a sense of patriotism. But when it’s controversial to assert so, I’m grateful that the Republican platform does. A society that teaches its children to hate it will not long persist.