Teaching schoolchildren what it means to be an American

OPINION:

Last week, Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma superintendent for public instruction, made national news for announcing that, effective immediately, his state’s teacher candidates (especially from such places as California and New York) will now be required to take and pass an “America First” test before they will be considered for employment in Oklahoma’s public schools. As you can imagine, the teachers unions and establishment elites have lost their ever-loving minds over this.

Before I get into the actual test that Mr. Walters is proposing, let’s review why America has public education in the first place.

This is the way George Washington University’s Center on Education Policy describes it.

“Preparing people for democratic citizenship was a major reason for the creation of [America’s] public schools. The Founding Fathers maintained that the success of the fragile American democracy would require an educated population that could understand political and social issues and would participate in civic life, vote wisely, [and] protect their rights and freedoms. … Character and virtue were also considered essential to good citizenship, and education was seen as a means to provide moral instruction and build character.”

The university continues: “The nation’s founders recognized that educating people for citizenship would be difficult to accomplish without a more systematic approach to schooling. … [Therefore,] Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and other early leaders proposed the creation of a more formal and united system of publicly funded schools.”

GWU summarizes by saying that in the minds of our nation’s founders, the responsibility for education was to be delegated explicitly to local communities. Congress, however, did enact two federal ordinances, one in 1785 and the other in 1787, whereby the government gave substantial land to the various states for public instruction that would “transform children into literate, moral, and productive citizens” who knew how to read and write and were well-versed in the history and principles of human freedom and corresponding good government.

In other words, the exclusive reason America’s public schools were established was to educate American children on how to be good American citizens.

With this as context, let’s get back to the issue of Mr. Walters and the “America First” test he is implementing in Oklahoma. Why does he want it? What does it evaluate? And why are liberals of nearly every stripe apoplectic over it?

Here’s a quote from Mr. Walters clarifying why he thinks the test is needed: “We want good, traditional teachers in the classroom who put academics first. … So, we’re going to make sure we’re doing our due diligence for the parents in the state of Oklahoma. We will make sure only the best and brightest are teaching in [our] classrooms, not Marxist indoctrinators.”

With the understandable desire to ensure that Oklahoma’s teachers are more interested in teaching American values than those, say, of Cuba, Venezuela or communist China, here’s a sampling of the multiple-choice questions on the test that Mr. Walters’ detractors so fear.

What are the first three words of the Constitution?

a. In God We Trust

b. Life, Liberty, Happiness

c. The United States

d. We the People

Why is freedom of religion important to America’s identity?

a. It makes Christianity the national religion

b. It bans all forms of public worship

c. It limits religious teaching in public life

d. It protects religious choice from government control

What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?

a. House of Lords and Commons 

b. Courts and Senate

c. Executive and Legislative

d. Senate and House of Representatives

How many U.S. senators are there?

a. 435

b. 110

c. 50

d. 100

There you have it. Mr. Walters dares to suggest that, at a minimum, public school teachers should be able to name the two chambers of Congress, tell you why freedom of religion is important and recite the first three words of the Constitution — and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth from our nation’s teachers unions and their lapdogs in Congress, on “The View,” MSNBC, etc.

If you want to know why our country is divided to the extent that nearly half the voters think that simply saying we want to “Make America great again” is hateful, xenophobic and evil, I think you just found the answer. It all starts with the teachers unions and their compliant lemmings who don’t even want America’s schoolchildren to understand the very basics of what it means to be an American.