Teach The Children Well

Mark Krikorian on NRO's The Corner asks:

" We were talking about how schools no longer do much of a job of patriotically Americanizing anyone, American kids or immigrant kids. I noted that limiting immigration was necessary in such an environment because, however poorly the schools are doing in this regard, American kids at least inherit a certain amount of American-ness from their parents, whereas immigrant parents are bringing their kids to school specifically to be Americanized. Linda Chavez disagreed, saying that the level of future immigration is irrelevant because, without rolling back multiculturalism and racialism in society in general and the schools in particular, the grandchildren of today's Americans will be no more American than the grandchildren of today's immigrants.

My question, and I don't mean it sarcastically, is does anyone agree? It seems to me clear that, given equally deficient efforts at Americanization, the children and grandchildren of Americans are more likely to grow up with a sense of patriotic solidarity with their fellow Americans than those of immigrants."

We can see the multiculturalism in our local schools, our children attend public elementary and middle schools in RRISD:
- The elementary school has a sign that says they are making kids "citizens of the world". (Silly me, I thought you were citizens of a sovereign nation).
- The school celebrated earth day, but learned nothing about President George Washington on Presidents Day.
- They send kids home with "TIME for kids", a schlocky liberal media take on current and past events; history as the polemic of the liberal as I would call it.
- The Sixth grade social studies was 'world cultures', there was only a little American history taught in 5th grade, as far as we could tell, so that our sixth grader recalls little about the American Revolution (only what we've told her).

Mark Krikorian is partly right about the immigration connection with multiculturalism, based on my personal experience. The school district and these schools we attend have a high concentration of immigrants (Asian immigrants in high-tech) and it helps 'validate' the multi-cultural thesis.

The solution for our kids is to 'home school' those critical gaps that the schools miss. Today, July 4th, was such a day, to remind our children what this country was founded on, and the facts and concepts around the American revolution. I am an active and concerned parent; probably only a fraction of parents are thus concerned enough to actively do such a thing.
Assimilation doesn't happen by the schools and so those immigrant parents may not be able to do the same for their kids, but neither are most American-born parents either.

Those who assert that the problem is with the schools themselves have the larger point. Despite these correlations between immigration and multiculturalism, the root cause is how
our schools are run, not who is attending the schools. Schools fail to do their job of teaching American citizenship as they should.

A sociologist once said that we are forever 20 years from barbarism. We are also, perhaps, 20 years from breakdown in American civic faith as well, and only in the schools and homes can we address it.

The errors of how schools are run can only be partially addressed by either limiting immigration and/or by making sure language and other assimilation factors are addressed when immigrants become citizens. The direct and sure way to address and solve this problem is to make sure citizenship, the ideals of our founders, and history of our Republic are all a serious part of the learning experience of every schoolchild - even the many children of illegal aliens that we are today educating in the public schools.