How to Raise a Grateful American

In nearly every part of the country, the school year is over. The final bell has rung; report cards have been issued; summer vacation has begun. For teachers and schools, the clock has run out. Whatever lessons students were going to learn about their country in the days leading up to its 250th birthday—our history, our ideals, our achievements, and our failures—have already been taught (or not taught).

But there is still time for parents. As I’ve written elsewhere, anticipation for the approaching Semiquincentennial pales in comparison to the 1976 Bicentennial, but if schools have failed to cultivate students’ gratitude, civic affection, and love of country, parents can still do so. In fact, they must.

A few weeks ago, in an episode of the Commentary podcast, John Podhoretz invoked John Rawls’s famous “veil of ignorance,” a thought experiment where you design a just society without knowing your future wealth, race, gender, or social status. The forced blindness encourages participants to create rules that protect and benefit everyone, especially the most disadvantaged members of society. Podhoretz put a patriotic spin on it, asking where you would choose to be born if you could know nothing about the circumstances of your future life.

For all our political divisions, cultural anxieties, and a litany of daily complaints, I suspect most of us would choose America. Not because America is perfect. Not because it is free from injustice, conflict, or disappointment. Simply because if you had to place a bet on which nation offered you the greatest likelihood of living your life in safety, prosperity, dignity, and freedom, you would be hard-pressed to make a better wager. Needless to say, this is not how many Americans think about their country. Nor, alas, is it the way many children learn about it.

I confess I’ve found the lack of enthusiasm for America’s approaching 250th birthday more than a little dispiriting. A nation preparing to mark a quarter millennium of self-government should be eagerly anticipating the occasion. We seem reluctant to celebrate, or we peevishly deny there is anything worth celebrating. Which is why I’ve been unexpectedly cheered by the flood of social media videos posted by foreign visitors who have come to the U.S. for the World Cup. They wander through Buc-ee’s with the awe of pilgrims entering a cathedral. They marvel at well-stocked supermarket aisles and wander through Bass Pro Shops like they’ve stumbled upon a lost civilization. They are astonished by public restrooms, vast highways, air conditioning, abundant food—with free refills!—and countless features of everyday life we have long since stopped regarding as remarkable.

We watch these videos and we’re charmed and amused. Well, of course there are 50 kinds of breakfast cereal! But that is precisely the point. One of the blessings of living in a prosperous and successful society is that you stop noticing it. Abundance becomes ordinary. Stability becomes invisible. Freedom is background noise. On the eve of a frankly desultory 250th and with impeccable timing, visitors from other countries have arrived to remind us of all we take for granted.

To be sure, consumerism is merely a surface-level indicator of our good fortune, not the soul of it. But our guests’ refreshing lens invites a summer civic education challenge for parents. Our children are growing up in a culture that is exceptionally good at teaching criticism. Young people learn to identify injustice, inequity, hypocrisy, and failure. Children reliably learn what America got wrong, but do they learn what we got right? Do they learn why billions of people around the world would gladly trade places with them? Do they learn why generations of immigrants crossed oceans, deserts, and borders for the chance to become Americans? Do they learn why our imperfect nation remains even now the destination of choice for millions seeking freedom, opportunity, and a better life?

To be clear, the nation needs citizens capable of seeing its shortcomings. Criticism teaches us what needs improving. Gratitude teaches us what is worth preserving. A healthy civic education requires both.

Parents grasp this intuitively. We teach children to say “thank you” because gratitude is essential to character. A grateful person understands that much of what makes his life possible was built, protected, or handed down by others. Gratitude fosters humility, stewardship, and a sense of obligation to future generations.

Citizenship requires precisely these virtues. Every American is the beneficiary of gifts he or she did not create: a constitutional order that has endured for two and a half centuries. Freedom of speech and religion. The rule of law. A vibrant civil society. The most creative and productive economy in human history. Scientific and technological advances that previous generations would have regarded as wizardry. Most of all, we inherit a country that millions of people throughout history have chosen, often at great personal risk, to join.

None of this requires viewing America through rose-colored glasses. Among the features of American life for which we should be grateful is our capacity for self-correction. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King Jr., and countless reformers appealed not to anti-American ideals but to American ones. They criticized the nation because they believed it was capable of becoming better. They called on America to live up to its promises. Love of country and honest criticism are not conflicting values, but love must come first. No child is likely to preserve or seek to improve what he has never learned to value.

Imagine raising a child in a grand old house. Every day you point out the peeling paint, the drafty windows, the leaky faucet, and the repairs that remain undone. You never mention the shelter it provides, the craftsmanship that built it, or the generations who maintained it before you arrived. Eventually the child will know every flaw in the house. But he may never understand why it was worth preserving. America is no different.

The school year is over, but cultivating gratitude does not require a district initiative or curriculum mandate. Patriotism is not a government program. It is an inheritance. Parents can lead it themselves. This summer, read a biography with your children. Visit a battlefield. Take them to a presidential library. Read the Declaration of Independence aloud. Attend a Fourth of July parade. Visit a national park. Tell family stories about grandparents and great-grandparents. Attend a naturalization ceremony and watch new Americans pledge allegiance to a country many native-born citizens take for granted. Teach your children not only what America got wrong but what America got right.

Schools have never been solely responsible for forming citizens. Families, churches, scouting organizations, libraries, youth sports leagues, civic associations, and countless other institutions helped cultivate a sense of belonging and obligation. They still can, and, indeed, they may have to. As I’ve noted elsewhere, schools have become demonstrably less interested in their founding purpose of preparing children for responsible citizenship. The school year is over. The opportunity is not.

There is still time to raise a grateful American.

As the nation approaches its 250th birthday, perhaps the most important lesson we can teach children is that, while America is not perfect, they have inherited something rare, precious, and unfinished.

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