For other great events like this. Now on cspan2 booktv, more television for serious readers. Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is ian rowe, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise institute and the Thomas P Ford institute. Most importantly, for todays discussion i am the ceo of public prep, a network of public charter elementary and middle school located in the heart of the south bronx and Lower East Side of manhattan. Its my honor to welcome you to what i believe will be a very provocative discussion on compelling new book how to educate an american the conservative vision for tomorrows schools, published by templeton press. Moore joined today by a fantastic group of panelists beginning with Michael Petrilli and chester finn respectively the president and president emeritus of fordham institute. How to educate an american was the brainchild of mike and chester finn and they will share the original inspiration behind the book and why it seems even more important now to revitalize k12 Civic Education. Joining us today as respondents are david bob, president of the bill of Rights Institute, david has worked 20 years to build strong Civic Education rights a apreviously at Hillsdale College and author of the book on the vital role of humility and politics. Welcome david. Also joining us is jonah goldberg, the asmus chair and applied liberty at the American Enterprise institute and the editor and chief of dispatch and let me, jonah actually has authored a chapter in how to educate an american. And finally, sarah sarah morgan smith, director of faculty at the Ashbrook Center which seeks to restore and strengthen the capacities of the American People for constitutional selfgovernment. Thank you all for joining. Two quick housekeeping notes, we will be doing a q a so please submit questions in one of two ways. Either you can email nicole. Penn aei. Org or submit questions to the hashtag educated americans aei. These will be posted on the aei and fordham websites and im pleased to share that cspan booktv website will also air the discussion. Its abto say the world has changed quite changed since they first conceived how to educate an american. They wanted to gather a group of scholars to provide a compendium of ideas that would reinvigorate conservative thought and education and ensure young people with value the nations history understands its system of government and shared cherish its founding ideas but then what i describe was two earthquakes and the trauma occurred. The first earthquake is of course the covid19 pandemic. As someone who runs a network in its third month of Distance Learning for 2000 students and now doing massive amounts of scenario planning for what school would look like in the fall the one thing that is certain is that instructional delivery and k12 education is gonna look radically different. What is less discussed is more and then anecdotal evidence suggesting that children who enter the pandemic embedded in strong typically married families were much more likely to be protected from financial and emotional stress. How will that fact change the urgency of what we teach young people about the importance of building Strong Families and a Strong Civil Society in a post covid world . The second earthquake as i describe it is the New York Times 16a9 project. If youre not familiar with 16a9 its the New York Times attempt to place slavery at the very center of our National Narrative in the year 1619 as the extreme founding of america and not be your 1776. The revisionist history of 1619 has widely been discredited to historians on both the left and the right and its premises being challenged by a Group Scholars and activists led by bob woodson who swarmed the 1776 project. Despite this opposition, the 1619 project lead author won the pulitzer which will likely only accelerate distribution of the 1619 curriculum which is already in thousands of urban schools ensuring that primarily low income kids of color grow up with an understanding of American History that assess the countrys founding ideals false, when they were written and that antiblack racism runs in the very dna of this country. How do we focus on Civic Education when thats the growing movement in urban schools. New results nation report card which has been released revealing the percentage of eighth grade students who demonstrated proficiency in content knowledge and skills which is 24 percent in civic, 24 percent and geography and 15 percent in us history. In history only 10 of eighth graders can explain why the south lost the civil war. Unfortunately these numbers are nothing new as these rumblings had been repeated for years. But that framing of the challenges comes how to educate in america. The lead editor Michael Petrilli how has the relevance has how to educate america changed or even been enhanced . Thank you so much i appreciate that. Thank you, first of all for hosting and moderating and all the great work you and your colleagues are doing for the boys and girls and young men and young women near schools in new york city. And thank you to the American Enterprise institute for hosting this. It was supposed to be a live event once upon a time, covid also made that impossible but we appreciate forging ahead with this webinar and we understand there are many hundreds of you out there watching and we appreciate your time. Wed checker and i launch the project more than two years ago we did so from a place of frustration. Thats because the National EducationReform Movement that roared across america after a nation at risk felt like it had run out of steam. With effort still in some states and community they appear to ns backward almost as often is a version of the stagnation that ross writes about his new book the decadent society. We felt stuck there had been nontrivial successes standards and edge successes are higher almost and they used to be. Achievement has risen a bit at least in earlier grades mostly in math especially the lowest performers. Some learning gaps have narrowed and many opportunities are wider. Millions more families have options for their childrens education as its no longer take it for granted that students will attend their district operated Public Schools closest to their homes. Those are all things to celebrate. Many of these reforms driving ideas were conservative in origin although making them happen typically entailed bipartisanship and compromise. As democrats and republicans mostly centerleft and centerright crowd Common Ground and pursuit of big changes in a deeply entrenched Education System that would not successfully serving many of their children or society in which they live. As we all know bipartisanship is in tatters today as many realms of our national life. Thats a big problem on countless fronts. Yet as abwrites in his chapter in this book is also an opportunity for conservatives to recognize that the gains made possible through bipartisanship also meant suppressing important differences. And neglecting some vital elements in schooling in particular in education in general. It seemed like time to lean into these differences. The highlight whats been neglected, lost or distorted. An address some troubling educational voids and see if we could renegotiate terms before the next wave of bipartisan reform. That was the purpose of how to educate an american, the conservative vision for tomorrow schools. And it almost 2 dozen rightleaning public intellectuals and scholars responded to our request to help us address the Big Questions about where america finds itself at this moment in history where we are going or should go, and the role of primary secondary education in taking us there. As should be expected from this Incredible Group of creative thinkers, they all set off in many directions yet their separate musings turned out to revolve around a few key themes. One theme revolves around good character. That includes moral education, properly construed but also the critical work of helping young people find purpose and feel needed, the benefits of asking students to work hard in their studies and beyond and the injustice of dubious discipline reforms that reinforce the soft bigotry of low expectations around student behavior. The second big theme urged a broader view of what comes after elementary and secondary education. Many of the authors argue that college need not be the only pathway to dignity or the middle class and a key goal of our schools should be to inform teenagers about the success secrets and encourage them to follow it. As we know that sequence is to finish school, get a fulltime job, get married and start a family in that order. As ian im sure will say a little bit later, ian and his chapter writes a lot about the success secrets and these broader issues of Family Structure. Finally, the third theme and the one we will discuss today is the importance to rekindling students understanding of American History emma civics and citizenship. Including the kind that and stones informed love of country as it acknowledges past failing and present challenges. That was the focus of jonahs fantastic chapter about irradiating the past about which we will hear more in a moment. It was also the subject of elliott combs wonderful essay on patriotic history. The history that is both proamerican and also critical of the many ways our beloved nation has fallen short of its ideals. It was a theme as well by a chapter by Adam Meyerson and adam kissel of the philanthropy roundtable about how donors can promote an excellent engaging version of Civics Education without relying solely on public institutions. And it was a big part of the concluding chapter by former education secretary William J Bennett expressing his concern that more than three decades after don hirsch warned us about cultural illiteracy we still fail to teach our youngest students history and geography, science and the arts, all important in their own right but also essential if we are ever to win the war against illiteracy. What all these essays have in common in my view is a broad agreement around the problem, even if we remain somewhat flummoxed about how to respond. The problem simply put is that the academic left has embraced revisionist history of the needs to attack americas history and especially its founding as inherently unjust and even racist. This version of history jumped the shark from elite colleges and universities into our high schools, especially via textbooks like coward limbs or peoples history of the United States and more recently as ian noted, the 1619 project. This in turn has politicized our k12 history classes classrooms. Thats not to say history was taught perfectly in the past, way back when our schools were surely too eager to gloss over the countrys failures and too often did so with boring lectures to boot. But the challenge from then and the counterparts cannot be ignored. Those who lead and teach in our schools had to choose how to respond. I suspect much of our discussion today will focus on the question of the right response, some conservatives may dream of eradicating zen analects from our schools of returning to him unabashedly patriotic version of history focused on great men and wars won and perhaps that might actually happen to some extent in deep red america or in conservative private and Charter Schools. The version of the benedict option. But is that really the best solution . To accept that some American Kids will be taught red American History while others will learn blue American History . Is there a way to teach a red and blue even purple history . An understanding and appreciation of our past that in Elliott Cohens formulation is both patriotic and critical . Without avoiding the conflicts and controversies which would make history even more boring and and engaging for our teenagers. Thats the challenge the nations educators face and i hope that today we might give them some hope that it can be met. Thank you. Michael, thank you for that great introduction and framing. Now we are going to hear from david bob, president of the bill of Rights Institute. Thank you for joining us and please share your thoughts. Thank you very much ian, thank you mike for the excellent framing and for you and chester putting this outstanding volume of essays and flow reflections together. In 2016 the south korean government set in motion a plan in which a new book was unveiled. The correct textbook of history was its title. Mind you, that was south korea, not north korea. It was designed to remedy the perceived flaws of other textbooks. This resource had the and for moderate of the government. It was a regime sanctioned textbook. You might be thinking, isnt it great we dont do that in the United States . Its true we do not have official textbook issued by the United States federal governments. What we do though have is a system in which the Decisionmaking Authority at the state level is largely largely with bureaucrats who are choosing textbooks created by a handful of the largest publishers. And what weve done in essence is create a kind of cartel. This cartel has produced textbooks that manage it at once to be ideologically barred and boring. They dont reflect the viewpoint of diversity that many teachers desire. Heres the good news, teachers are more entrepreneurial than this system in many cases. Take for example what the Digital Company news ella discovered, administrators say the teachers are using textbooks about half the time about half the days in which schools in session. This is pretty covid conducted precovered. What teachers say is that they are using their official sanction textbooks about a fifth days. I think thats a good thing and as several contributors point out in how to educate an american we need to do more to help district, charter, private, and homeschooling teachers, parents, have ready access to viewpoint diverse resources. These resources need to challenge students on how it is they can become thoughtful patriotic citizens. Robbie george in particular makes a powerful case Viewpoint Diversity should be a public and private good and it must be ultimately the foundation in which we build a sound Civic Education. This part of the solution in particular suggests that the subtitle of the book the conservative vision of tomorrow schools might well be amended to a vision for tomorrow schools for all americans. In other words, sound Civic Education is neither conservative nor progressive, neither left nor right. It does not push a political agenda but it does ennoble our policy. Civics teaches its students young and old the vibrancy of Civil Society. Civics is also inexplicable. Whether or not there is a course called civics for secondary school students, they are constantly forming for good or ill viewpoint on american ideas and institutions. For most Young Americans that worldview is inchoate. Sound civic says Elliott Cohen forcibly argues an essay in this book should be patriotic. He admits, however, at the end of his essay but does not explore as much as i wouldve liked that patriotic history needs guardrails. To ensure it doesnt feed ideological narratives like the lost cause idea relating to the civil war. Cohen advances what might be called for favoritism of this book sections on civic and History Education. Let me just summarize it using his words. Without civics, our Political Institutions are reduced to value lists mechanisms. Without history, there is no Civic Education. Without Civic Education there are no citizens, without citizens there is no free republic. I endorse this line of argument and greatly appreciate Robbie George is reminded that civics and history as well as philosophy in every other humane inquiry must be grounded in humility. Our task is not manly to have another period of lamentation about needs scores but rather to take up the task of supporting teachers, parents and administrators need to recognize that is a hard task to viewpoint diverse. I believe having seen this for the last six years of the bill of Rights Institute that many of our teachers in the social studies community are very much in favor of and indeed do every day of viewpoint diverse presentation of civics and history. There are resources weve created at the bill of Rights Institute that seek to be part of the solution. I just want to mention a couple of them before turning my time over. The website abhas hundreds in fact thousands of different resources that teachers can choose from to support their work. As the si