1/3/2023

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal begins with Nathan Harden’s report that continues to dive into the findings of a recent survey that was commissioned by the Jack Miller Center and conducted by RealClear Opinion Research. Completed in November, the survey “included responses from more than one thousand likely voters on topics related to education, civics instruction, and the American founding,” Harden notes. Though more than 63 percent of parents said their children felt pride and gratitude when looking at the American flag, 30 percent “said their children felt ‘indifference’ when they saw the flag,” a number that featured higher percentages of younger parents. This finding suggests “that younger parents may share some of that indifference about America in general,” which Harden calls a “civics education age gap.” To counter “a more pessimistic view of our nation and a more activist vision of the civics classroom” among younger parents, Jack Miller Center President Hans Zeiger counsels, “We can be honest about our history without being romantic about it.” And as education and civil rights activist Bob Woodson argues, we must also highlight “the importance of allowing for ‘redemption’” when considering “our national identity,” seeing our nation’s flaws in light of its great promise of liberty and equality for all.

At the New York Post, Douglas Murray unveils a new historical series that responds to the rise of “propaganda exercises” that “attempt to turn the story of America into a story of original sin, slavery and much more.” This series, “Uncancelled History,” which is available on all podcast channels and YouTube, focuses on the “absolutely central figures” in the American story such as Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Each episode features Murray sitting down with one of America’s “leading historians to fill in the gap of ignorance that has been deliberately inserted into American society.” For example, the Thomas Jefferson scholar Jean Yarborough argues that the popular claim Jefferson fathered a child with Sally Hemmings, one of his slaves, “would be chucked out if it had ever come into a court of law.” As Murry concludes, “America is amazing not by accident, but by design. It is time we understood that design, and paid due reverence to the designers themselves. Because we have not just something – but everything – to be thankful to them for.”