"Public Virtue" by Pamela Su'a, the Top Winner of the Teacher Division

The twenty-first century is an amazing place to live! Technology capabilities are snowballing every month. Media allows us to watch live encounters in Iraq or on the red carpet. The stock market is down, then up, then down. . . . Every day creative thinkers add richness to our world. Events that would have been considered miracles a few years ago are now commonplace. But in our zeal to live life to the fullest, we may have misplaced a solution that could support industry, government and politics, religions, education, home and family. Two principles, endorsed by our Founding Fathers are fading from our lives in America: civic virtue and a good education. This essay will propose these two virtues as solutions to many issues in today’s society. As a history teacher, my role in helping students develop both is vital.

Many of our Founders were widely read and knew that virtuous men of politics must seek the good (Socrates), develop the habit of acting rightly (Aristotle), be true to one’s office (Cicero), obey the law of nature (Locke) and have a sense of moral balance in governance (Montesquieu). [1] George Washington was considered a model of civic virtue. As our first president he set a precedent for what a virtuous government leader should be. James Madison in Federalist 55 states “republican government presupposes the existence of [civic virtue] in a higher degree than any other form” and cited several virtues as indispensable for a self-governing republic: civic knowledge, self-restraint, self-assertion and self-reliance. John Adams, himself a model of civic virtue and one of our highly educated presidents, stressed values and civic virtue. “Is there a form of government, then, whose principle and foundation is virtue, will not every sober man acknowledge it better calculated to promote the general happiness than any other form?”[2]

Civic virtue is impossible without education. Our students need to want to be educated and see the value of participating in school fully so that upon graduation, they have the knowledge and skills to function well in society. Civic virtue and a good education go hand in hand toward promoting a better society in America today. Ronald Reagan stated: “Education is not the means of showing people how to get what they want. Education is an exercise by means of which enough men, it is hoped, will learn to want what is worth having.”[3] As teachers, we need to continuously improve our teaching skills and content knowledge so we can help our students participate in their own education. We need to help students understand the value of education and then model and give them practice in civic virtue. Thomas Jefferson is widely quoted on the subject of education “I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”[4] “I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the conditions, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.”[5] Although Jefferson and Adams were highly divergent thinkers politically, they agreed on this: the American populace must be educated in order for democracy to work.

In our nation and world today there is a multitude of examples of events that would have turned out differently had education and/or civic virtue been in play. One example locally; our school district is being divided. Currently we are the largest district in the state. Because of our size, we offer many programs and services to students at all levels that smaller districts cannot offer. The two factors that brought the split about are both related to civic virtue. A small elementary school with less than 300 students was closed to allow resources to be utilized in a larger elementary school of over 1500 students. The parents and community were angry that it closed. The second reason is that older patrons on one side of the district have raised their children and didn’t want to spend the next years educating students in the fast-growing opposite side. Now, $33 million dollars[6] that could have gone to student programs is being spent to divide the district. The attorneys, contractors, and arbitrators are getting the money while our students have lost services. We can relate civic virtue to almost any of our national problems. A stronger education and wider picture of the world, nation, or our own community, would better prepare us to deal with economic issues as well.

As a history teacher, my job is clear: to help my students learn lessons from history, and learn to apply what they learn. Students in my eighth grade U.S. History class on September 11, 2001 discussed the treatment of Japanese after Pearl Harbor and made written appeals to local government leaders to not repeat past mistakes. It is also my job to help my students develop and practice civic virtue and to see the benefit of an education. In the words of my favorite historian: “We live in an era of momentous change, creating great pressures and tensions. But history shows that times of tumult are the times when we are most likely to learn.”[7] If I can give my students the tools to succeed in the twenty-first century as good citizens through my history lessons, I have in some measure demonstrated my own civic virtue.