3/25/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts off with a piece by Jack Miller Center fellow and Monticello historian John Ragosta, who remembers the anniversary of Patrick Henry’s famous “Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me Death!” speech. At RealClearHistory, Ragosta highlights what is undoubtedly one of the most famous and pivotal political speeches of all-time. Henry pleads with his fellow countrymen to start a revolution that would secure self-government in America, which the British had been increasingly impeding upon as the eighteenth century wound on. “Today, we enjoy the liberty for which Henry and his colleagues fought,” Ragosta notes. “But Henry did not see it as liberty to do whatever one wants, but liberty to join with other citizens to make laws and ensure freedom for the whole community.” Ragosta argues that we should speak up and join the ongoing debate today, for self-government hangs in the balance.

At Deseret News, Lisa R. Halverson and Pam Campbell Su’a argue that teachers are key in promoting a quality civics education for students. This goes all the way back to our republic’s very foundations: “The Founders and Framers foresaw that civic understanding would be essential to enduring American self-government.” Halverson and Su’a note, “Early proponents of public education looked to schools to provide instruction in civic knowledge, skills, dispositions and virtues.” But they add that the sole responsibility to inculcate civics shouldn’t fall exclusively on teachers in the classroom. Halverson and Su’a write that “teachers should be assisted by families, Scouts, local government, nonprofits and communities of faith.” In order for our students to “gain the civic skills, dispositions and virtues,” they need “to become engaged and productive citizens” who are quality members of their local communities.