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Is K-12 Education Patriotic Enough?

Questions have been raised about whether education in America is patriotic enough.  There are even proposals from the Oval Office to invest $5B in making US education more patriotic.  But what is "patriotic education" and how can we make K-12 ed more patriotic?

These questions get very deep very fast.  If we want to educate people to become more pro-American, what is it that we want them to say is great about America?  And in cases where our country falls short of our ideals, how is our patriotism supposed to react to that?  

Some people would say that it is unpatriotic to complain about America.  "Love it or leave it!"  Yet probably the most broadly revered part of the Bill of Rights, which in turn is probably the most revered part of our Constitution, is the 1st Amendment--guaranteeing freedom of speech and religion, the right "peaceably to assemble"...and the right to "petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  So if everything is already perfect, why would we need to be able to speak up, get together and protest (peacefully), and pursue complaints against the authorities?  

In other words, our Founding Fathers expected the government to fall short and to need to continually be improved--in part by pressure from the people. And so they built the right to criticize the government into the Constitution. Indeed, the Preamble to the Constitution declares that a key reason for the Constitution is to establish "a more perfect Union..."  

The Founding Fathers were clearly skeptical about governmental institutions & actions ever becoming permanently perfect.  This is further reflected in the Constitutional checks and balances between the federal and state governments, and between the branches of government--not to mention the Founding Fathers' path to amend the Constitution itself, when it is found by a clear majority to fall short in some respect.  In other words, they did not even expect the Constitution itself to be perfect!  (This process for correcting Constitutional imperfections has happened 17 times, since the first 10 amendments ("the Bill of Rights") were approved.)  

In order to honor our Founding Fathers and both their original & our improved Constitution, it seems clear that a "patriotic education" needs to include both learning respect for what America declares that it is and strives to be, as well as learning respect for making America even better.  We need to be able to both honor our country's ideals and to give hope to those with complaints.  Those with legitimate grievances need to feel confident that there is a real possibility that their issues against the government will one day be redressed. 

Thanks to our Founding Fathers & to generations since, there are indeed patriotic paths which can lead to an even better America--and we need to learn about these paths as part of any "patriotic education."  And this certainly needs to be applied to improving physical & health education, recess, counseling and other health-related K-12 education.

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