Skip to main content

Is K-12 Education Patriotic Enough?

Questions have been raised about whether education in America is patriotic enough.  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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it a “Miracle Drug”?...if it Costs a Fortune and Creates Lifelong Dependency...&...Saggy Faces!?

[It’s been a while since our last blog post.  A lot has happened since– including some “miracles” ! So we’re going to do two posts in a row…] Normally we should all be happy about miracle drugs... shouldn't we ? Yes, there is lots of upside from taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Montjaro)--and upcoming new, even-more-miraculous drugs TBD:  losing huge amounts of weight quickly, a much lower risk of diabetes–and probably less heart disease and other chronic conditions as well.  But what if the “miracle” requires:   $200-300/week, with a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars…  a drug that you can never quit…because if you stop taking it, you gain back all the weight it helped you lose–not to mention the chronic diseases which the drugs kept at bay… and it leaves your face (and the rest of your skin?) sagging …    (plus, it’s so new at such high dosages– who knows what happens after years of use…? ) No doubt, in spit...
4 comments
Read more

It’s Come To This for Many of Our Teens: Radical Surgery and/or a Lifetime of Pharmaceuticals

The American Academy of Pediatrics just came out in favor of powerful prescription drugs (which must be taken lifelong to avoid weight regain & chronic disease) for adolescents--and potentially for pre-teens (ages 8-11)--with moderate to severe obesity. Bari atric surgery (permanently reengineering kids’ gastrointestinal systems) should also be considered for adolescents with severe obesity .  (The Academy also recommends "nutrition support, physical activity, and behavioral therapy"--but as with so many other areas of US chronic disease management, we can see where default treatments are headed: drugs & surgical procedures.) Such radical treatment recommendations created the usual (and temporary and ineffectual) tsunami of news & social media shock and indignation. The decades-long performative reaction to the increasingly bad news on dangerous levels of early obesity–and now 1 in 3 teens with prediabetes, across ethnicities & income levels–is itself sicken...
Post a Comment
Read more

Both/And: Personal & School & Social Responsibility for Health

Many people are promoting a false dichotomy for who/what to “blame” for decades of pervasive inactivity & unhealthy nutrition--the key preventable factors which have led to the majority of adults developing chronic disease. Some believe that people with preventable chronic diseases made a series of unhealthy choices for decades, for which they need to accept personal responsibility for the consequences. On the other side, a growing number of policymakers focus on the “social determinants of health.”  In other words, there are many things beyond your control, which impact what you eat & drink and how active you are.  This includes factors such as your family, neighborhood, school, employer, transportation, public safety, housing, community layout, etc. etc.  It’s those external social factors which determine your health destiny.   Actually, the personal and social are inextricably connected--not opposite ends of the spectrum.  Let’s consider the role...
Post a Comment
Read more