Growing up Global vs. American Exceptionalism
December 30, 2011 4 Comments
View of Earth's lights at night
I’m all for being respectful of and interested in other cultures. Some of my closest friends are from different cultural backgrounds. Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly popular among today’s educators to attempt to cast our lives on the planet as being more meaningful as global citizens rather than American citizens. This practice once again unmoors people from the historical context of real life and attempts to build a fantasy world that has never worked and will never work on this side of heaven.
If you forget where you come from you don’t know who you are. If teachers do not teach the role that America has played in history in the last century (or rather focus on America’s mistakes rather than her successes see my post on poststructuralism), it is no wonder that students blindly accept notions that:
- America should become like Europe and the rest of the world
- America should bend over backwards to somehow make up for our place in the world power structure
- We as Americans should subject our futures and our economic well-being to severe risk because of pseudoscientific environmental doomsday nonsense
Rather than teachers guiding their students to be global citizens, we should instead be teaching children what has made America great… What has made America strong… Why America has been the refuge of choice for millions of people over the last two centuries. We should not teach children that America needs to become like the rest of the world. That is a huge mistake on the part of many politicians and teachers today.
The documentary Agenda: The Grinding Down of America shines some telling light on this discussion. I recommend obtaining a copy and watching it at your earliest convenience. Agenda explains how teaching our children socialist concepts has been weakening America for the last several decades and threatens to destroy her from the inside out.
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Conservative Educator 
This is a little silly…
– Male African Americans in inner cities in the US have a life expectancy in the 50’s.
– America boasts an adult population of which 25% possess level 1 literacy skills.
– The American economy is in utter ruin.
By all accounts the United States is a third world country. The only thing that separates you is a massive military power.
AlternateEconomy,
Those unfortunate statistics about America seem quite reasonable today. However not long ago those statistics were not true of America. In fact just the opposite was true. We had a prosperous economy, a low mortality rate, and one of the highest literacy rates in the world. If we as a nation, no, if we as individuals in large enough numbers, get back to those principles that once made our nation great, we will return to being a peaceful and prosperous society. Some of those principles include: Christian morality, hard work, thrift, charity, and self-control.
Very well said.
I cannot help but agree with you on this point.
I believe that you are right in saying we need to return to morality. However, as a Canadian I am not sure if I agree it has anything to do with you being American, Perhaps the borders and nations are the problem, not the goal of living in morality.
I completely agree with you on the importance of knowing the amazing history of America. The principles which our nation were founded on are the perhaps the most noble and intellectual any country has ever been founded on. But I would like to make just one comment.
Global Citizenship is the notion that ALL REALMS of citizenship need to be developed and exercised. This means citizenship to your community, your country, and the world. It is not, in any way, suggesting that citizenship on a global level means forgetting where you came from and the importance of acting as a citizen in your own country. If anything, it is allowing people to become better citizens of their country by knowing the full context of where their country lies on the global stage.