Oped: US History

The Founding Fathers believed the main role of public education was not workforce development, but to create citizens prepared for informed participation in American democracy. Without this, they feared the nation might dissolve. Never have the founders looked more prescient.

Rather than seeking to raise a generation of political activists and community organizers, civics programs should instill an informed love of our country based on the nation’s founding, how our system of government works, and what Americans have achieved – together with our many failings – since the nation was created.

This week marks the 65th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old black boy from Chicago who was killed by two white Mississippians for whistling in the presence of a white woman.

This spring, Massachusetts’ Easthampton High School was crowned national champion in the “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution” contest. The competition brings together about 1,200 students from across the country to answer civics questions based on America’s Founding Documents including the U.S. Constitution; The Federalist Papers; and U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

By Jamie Gass and Will Fitzhugh This op-ed appeared in The Federalist, The Berkshire Eagle, and The Springfield Republican. The French Revolution began with optimistic Age of Enlightenment slogans about ‘Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité,’ before quickly degenerating into the darkened recesses of human...

By Jamie Gass & Charles Chieppo Read this op-ed in The American Conservative We are now nearly four decades beyond the publication of A Nation at Risk, a federal report that indicted the “rising tide of mediocrity” and initiated a well-deserved period...

Read this op-ed in The Springfield Republican, The New Bedford Standard Times, The MetroWest Daily News, and The Daily Caller. “Harvard’s motto is ‘VERITAS’…” the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said 40 years ago in his “A World Split Apart” commencement address. “[T]ruth eludes us...

This op-ed appeared in The Springfield Republican, The Standard-Times of New Bedford, The Providence Journal, and The Federalist. “The fall of the Berlin Wall makes for nice pictures,” said Poland’s Lech Walesa, the charismatic Gdansk electrician who co-founded Solidarnosc (Solidarity), the first independent...

By Jamie Gass and Will Fitzhugh “Students of reading, writing, and common arithmetick . . . Graecian, Roman, English, and American history . . .,” Thomas Jefferson advised about democratic education, “should be able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights...

By Tom Birmimgham | Nov. 30, 2017 State must make good on requirement for history instruction and testing ABOUT 25 YEARS AGO, as a member of the Massachusetts Senate, I co-authored the Massachusetts Education Reform Act. Drafting a complex bill with such far-reaching consequences...