Petrilli, chester finn president emeritus of the institute how to educate an american was the brainchild of mike and chester and today theyre going to share with us the original inspiration behind the book and why its themes are even more important now to revitalize k12 Civic Education. Joining us today are david bob, president of the bill of Rights Institute, david has worked for 20 years to build strong Civic Education programs thatengage the hearts and mindsof young people. Previously david worked at Hillsdale College and is author of a book on the vital role ofhumility. Welcome david also joining us is Jonah Goldberg , hes the chair applied liberty at the American Enterprise institute and editorinchief of the dispatch and let me jonah has authored a chapter in how to educate an american and finally several morgan smith, director of faculty at the Ashford Center which seeks to restore and strengthen the capacities of the American People for constitutional selfgovernance. Thank you all for joining us. Two quick housekeeping notes. We will be doing a q and day so please submit questions in one of two ways. Either you can email at nicole. Penn aei. Org or submit questions to the hashtag educatingamericansaei. This will be posted on the fordham website and im pleased to share that cspans book tv website will also air the discussion. Its fair to say the world has changed quite dramatically since mike and chester first conceived how to educate an american. As michael soon shared they wanted to gather a group of scholars to provide a compendium of ideas that would reinvigorate conservative thought and education and ensure young people with would value the nations history, understand its system of governance and cherish its founding ideals but then what i described as 2 earthquakes and a tremor occurred. The first earthquake is of course the covid19 pandemic and as someone who runs a network that is in its third week of Distance Learning for 2000 students and now doing massive amounts of scenario planning for what schools will look like in the fall, the one thing that is certain is that instructional delivery in k12 education is going to look radically different. What has been less discussed is more than anecdotal evidence suggesting children who enter the pandemic embedded in Strong Families were much more likely to be protected from financial and emotional distress. I will that fact change the urgency of what we teach young people about the importance of building Strong Families and a Strong Civil Society in a postauntran5a world . The second earthquake as i described it is the New York Times 1619 project. If youre not familiar with 1619 is the New York Times attempt to place slavery at the center of our National Narrative and in the year 1619 and has the true founding of america and not the year 1776. The revisionist history of 1619 has widely been discredited by historians on both the left and the right and its premise is being challenged by a group of scholars and activists led by bob woodson has formed the 1776 project but despite this opposition, the 1619 project lead author won the pulitzer which will likely only accelerate this distribution of a 1619 collector in which is already in thousands of urban School Insurance that primarily low income kids of color grow up with an understanding of American History that has said the countrys founding ideals were false when they were written in that antiblack racism runs in the very dna of this country. How do we focus on Civic Education when thats a growing movement in urban schools . And beyond these two earthquakes is what i call the tremor, a periodic disruption that regularly reminds us places Civic Education thatexists in america. The nations report card reveals that the percentage of eighthgrade students who demonstrated proficiency and content knowledge and skills was just 24 percent in six, 25 percent geography and 15 percent in us history and in history only 10 percent of eighth graders and explain why the south lost the civil warand unfortunately these numbers are nothing new at these rumblings have been repeated for years. With that framing of the challenges comes out to educate an american and lead editor michael petrilli. How relevant is has how to educate an american been engaged or even enhanced . First of all thank you for hosting and moderating today but also for the great week work you and your colleagues are doing for boys and young men and women in your schools in new york city and the American Enterprise institute for hosting us. It was supposed to bealive event once upon a time. Covid obviously made that impossible but we appreciate you forging ahead with this webinar and we understand there are many hundreds of you watching andwe appreciate your time. Though when chet and i launched the project that would become how to educate an american more than two years ago we did so from a place offrustration. Because the National EducationReform Movement that tore across america felt like it had run out of steam. While Reform Efforts will injure long in some states and communities they appear to in go almost as often and its a version of the stagnation ross writes about his new book a decadent society. We felt stuck. There have been some nontrivial successes, standards and expectations are higher almost everywhere and they used to be. Achievement has risen a bit at least in the earlier grades. Mostly in math and especially for lowestperformers. Some learning gaps have narrowed many opportunities are wider. Millions more families options for their childrens education that is no longer taken for granted students will attend their district operated Public Schools closest to their homes so those are all things to celebrate many of these reforms driving ideas were conservative in origin although making them entail the bipartisanship and compromise. As democrats and republicans mostly centerleft and centerright Common Ground in pursuit of big changes in a deeply entrenched Education System was not successfully serving many of their children or the society in which theylive. As we all know bipartisanship is in patterson in many rounds of our National Life and thats a big problem on response. Yet as a eae eyes you all 11 right in his chapter in this book its an opportunity for conservatives to recognize that the games made possible by through bipartisanship alsomeant suppressing important differences and neglecting vital elements of schooling in particular an education ingeneral. It seemed like time lean into these differences to highlight whats been neglected , lost or distorted and addressing troubling education and see if we can renegotiate terms before the next wave ofbipartisan reform. Though that was the purpose of how to educate an american , the conservative vision for Tomorrows Schools. And its almost 2 dozen rightleaning public intellectuals and scholars responded to our request to help us address the bigger questions about where america finds itself at this moment in history, where were going or should go and the role of primary secondary education in taking us there. Now as should be expected from this Incredible Group of creative thinkers, they all set off in many directions and yet their separate musings turned out to revolve around a few key themes. One theme revolve around the character and that includes moral education, properly construed but also the critical work of helping young people find purpose and feel needed. The benefits of acting students to work hard in their study and beyond the injustice of dubious discipline reforms that reinforce a soft bigotry of low expectations around student behavior. The second big theme urged a broader view of what comes after elementary and secondary education of the authors argue need not be the only pathway to dignity for the middle class and the goal of our schools should be to inform teenagers about the success sequence and encourage them to follow it. As we know that sequence is the finished school, get a fulltime job, married and start a family inthat order. As p. M. Im sure will say later, ian in his chapter write a lot about the success with these broader issues of family. Finally, the third theme is the importance of rekindling students understanding of American History. Syntax and citizenship including the kind that instills and informed love of country even as it acknowledges past failings and present challenges. That was the focus of jonas chapter about irradiating the past which will hear about in a moment and is the subject of Elliott Collins essay on patriotic history, a history that is both proamerican and also critical of the many ways our beloved nation has fallen short of its ideals. Its the theme as well of a chapter by Adam Meyerson of the philanthropy roundtable about how donors can promote an excellent engaging version of Civics Education without relying solely on institutions and it was a big part of the concluding chapter by former education secretary William J Bennett expressing his concerns more than three decades after don first warned us about cultural illiteracy we still fail to teach our youngest students history and geography, science and the arts, all important in their own right but also essential if we areever to win the war against illiteracy. What all these essays have in common in my view is a broad agreement around the problem even if you remain flummoxed about how to respond. The problem simply put it the academic left as embrace revisionist history as a means to attack americas history especially if outing as inherently unjust and even racist. This version of history jumped the shark from elite colleges and universities into our high schools especially by a textbooks like howards in history of the United States and more recently as ian noted 1619 project. This has politicized our k12 history classrooms. At not to say history was thought perfectly in the past. Way back when our schools were surely eager to gloss over the country failings too often did so with boring lectures to boot. But the challenge forms in a counterpart cannot beignored. Those who lead and teach in our schools to choose how to respond. I suspect much of our discussion will focus on the question of the right response. Some conservatives may dream of eradicating in the light from our schools and returning to an unabashedly patriotic version of history focus on great men and wards one and perhaps that might actually happen to some extent in the red america area or in conservative private and Charter Schools. A version of the benedict option. But is that really the best solution to accept that some American Kids will be thought red American History while others will learn blue American History lesson is there a way to eat a red and blue, even purple history on an appreciation of our past and Elliott Collins formulation is both patriotic and critical . Without avoiding conflicts of controversy which would make history even more boring and unengaged for our teenagers . Thats the challenge the nations educators face and i hope that today we might give them hope that can be met. Thank you. Michael, thank you forthat great introduction and framing. Now we are going to hear from david bob, president of the bill of rights incidents, thank you for joining usand please share your thoughts. Thank you very much ian and thank you mike for that excellent framing and for you and chester putting this outstanding volume of essays and reflectionstogether. You know, in 2015 the south korean government set in motion a plan by which the new bookwas unveiled. The correct textbook of history was its final area now mind you, that wassouth korea, not north korea. It was designed to remedy the perceived flawsof other textbooks , this resource had really and premature of the government. It was a regime sanctioned textbook. You might be thinking isnt it great that we dont do that in the United States and its true, we do not have official textbooks issued by the United States government. What we do know how is a system in which the Decisionmaking Authority of the state level is largely with bureaucrats. Who are choosing textbooks created by a handful of the largest publishers. And what weve done in essence is create a kind of cartel. In this cartel is reduced textbooks that manage its at once to the ideologically barred and boring. They dont reflect the viewpoints diversely that many teachers desire to your good news. Teachers are more on entrepreneurial and assistant in many cases. Take for example what the Digital Company news ellen discovered. Administrators and teachers are using textbooks about half the time. About half the days in which school is in session. This was preauntran5a. What teachers say is that theyre using their official sanction textbooks about one out of five days. Now, i think thats a good thing. And as several contributors point out in how to educate an american , we need to do more to help districts, charter, privateand homeschooling teachers , parents have ready access to viewpoints diverse resources. These resources need to challenge students on how it is that they can become thoughtful patriotic citizens. Robbie george in particular makes a powerful case that Viewpoint Diversity should be a public and private good and it must be also the foundation on which we build education. This part of the solution in particular suggests that the subtitle of the book, a conservative vision for Tomorrows School might well be amended to a vision for Tomorrows Schoolsfor all americans. In other words, sound Civic Education is neither conservative nor progressive. Neither left nor right. It does not push a political agenda but it does in noble our policy area civic speeches asked students young and old the vibrancy of Civil Society. Civics is also inescapable in this whether or not there is a course for civics for secondary School Students , their constantly forming for good or ill a viewpoint on american ideas and institutions. For most young americans, that worldview is in color. Sound civics as eliot cohen forcibly argues in the essay in this book to be patriotic. He admits however at the end of his essay but does not explore as much as i wouldve liked that adriatic history needs are great. To ensure that it doesnt eat ideological narratives the lost cause idea relating to the civil war. Common advances what might be called the facility some of this book section on second History Education. Let me summarize it using his words. Without civics, our Political Institutions are reduced to valueless mechanisms. Without history, there is no education. Not Civic Education there are no citizens. Without citizens there is no freerepublic. I endorsed this line of argument and greatly appreciate robbie georges reminder that civics in history as well as philosophy and every other humane inquiry must be grounded in real are passed i believe is not merely to have another period of lamentation but rather to take up the task of supporting teachers. Parents and administrators need to recognize is a hard task to be viewpoint diverse and i believe having seen this for the last six years of the bill of rights is that many of our teachers and the social studies community are very much in favor of and indeed doevery day viewpoint diverse presentation of civics in history. There are resources that we created at the bill of Rights Institute that seek to be part of the solution. I just want to mention a couple of them before turning my time over. Just a website. My bri. Word has hundreds of and in fact thousands of different resources that teachers can choose from to support their work. As a indicate these are topics that relate to things that often are hard subjects. For example how do we balance liberty and security. How do we talk about and upload away religious liberty . How do we understand immigration area how do we know and celebrate those remarkable accomplishments done in the spirit of the declaration of independence the 19th amendment. As the next slide shows theres a lot of things thati think can be done directly engage students. They just got done for example millions of students taking advanced placement exams. We have seminars and webinars indeed teach those students with those ideas and a rich conversation on july 6 the bill of Rights Institute were released a publication called life, liberty and the pursuit ofhappiness, history of the american experiment. These employs 100 leading academic historians who have agreed on virtually nothing. You debate