Toward A Shared American Story
By Mitch Siegler, Founder

I recently read an essay in Commentary by the education scholar Robert Pondiscio in which he reflects on America’s upcoming 250th anniversary and compares it to the 1976 Bicentennial he experienced as a boy.

The 1970s were hardly a golden age, as Pondiscio notes. The country was grappling with the trauma of the Vietnam War and Watergate. Crime was high, and trust in government was low as the economy suffered the dual shocks of inflation and sluggish economic growth, and many of the era’s defining films – like The French Connection, Taxi Driver, and Three Days of the Condor – captured Americans’ unease. Still, there was a sense of patriotism and pride in the U.S. on her 200th birthday.

Pondiscio was surely looking back half a century through nostalgic glasses. Even so, from an educational perspective, the country was on firmer ground than it is today, when we are dealing with plummeting performance in reading and math.

In the 1970s, children were typically not taught that the United States was fundamentally and irredeemably unjust, nor that our flaws defined us. Political ideologies – like critical race theory, “liberated” ethnic studies, and “oppressor/oppressed” binaries – had not yet made their insidious march through our K-12 schools. Today, however, after 50 years of progress towards mutual acceptance and equal opportunity in so many areas of society, many schools are steeped in these concepts.

Parts of American history, of course, are painful – reading about the abuse of slaves in the antebellum South or of the mistreatment of American Indians, for example, dispels any notion of perfection. No country’s hands are clean of historical wrongdoing. But our founding principles, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, make those flaws not just intolerable but rectifiable, and gave leaders like Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. the vocabulary to confront them.

Yet for those pushing radical and divisive ideology in schools, those founding principles are suspect, their authors are hypocritical racists, and American progress towards equality is a lie.

“Fifty years on, American childhood has changed and so has America,” Pondiscio writes. “We are more anxious and fragmented, less confident, and quite incapable of sharing a moment of uncomplicated civic pride.”

This is heartbreakingly true. To state the obvious: our country cannot have a bright future if our children are taught that bedrock American principles are hopelessly antiquated, racist, and disposable. Yet too often, our education system reflects and reinforces the polarization that has come to define public life.

Thankfully, there is a better way forward, and most American parents already support it.

Our recent nationwide survey of more than 2,200 parents points to a clear consensus. Ninety percent say it is important to teach civics. Ninety-one percent believe students should learn mutual respect, including how to engage with viewpoints they disagree with. Eighty-two percent support teaching the value of a colorblind society where individuals are judged by their character, not their race or ethnicity – which flies directly in the face of trendy ideological concepts that view life mostly, if not entirely, through a racial or ethnic lens. Eighty-five percent of respondents believe that one’s success is due to individual attributes such as hard work and perseverance, not immutable traits.

The phrase E Pluribus Unum captures something essential about the American experiment. Out of many, one. It reflects the idea that unity can coexist with difference, and that a shared civic foundation is what allows a diverse society to flourish.

At THINC Foundation, this principle guides our work. We are developing The American Story: Out of Many, One, a constructive and unifying ethnic studies curriculum that emphasizes primary sources, the contributions of diverse groups to the American story, and shared democratic values while encouraging students to engage thoughtfully with both history and one another.

Parents want classrooms that prioritize civil dialogue and civic understanding. They want students to be prepared to think critically, to listen, and to participate meaningfully in a pluralistic society. What they do not want is the politicization of the classroom or for children to be taught to think in essentialist, rigid ways.

As we approach America’s 250th birthday, the question is not only how we reflect on our history, but how we prepare the next generation to carry it forward.

K-12 schools will play a central role in that effort. When they instill the values that unite us, they help build the foundation for a healthier, more optimistic society.