Teach the American story: Patriotism is not a dirty word

Asked to name what unites us as Americans, Yoni Applebaum said a word he thought everyone would accept: "Patriotism."

The meeting exploded in anger, he writes in The Atlantic. "One woman said the word made her feel excluded. Another said it connoted violence and racism. Still another participant was offended that anyone could be offended by the word." Everyone in the room was a member of a group seeking a common narrative of America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they'd gotten stuck. The facilitator refused to write "patriotism" on the easel.

Applebaum is grateful for our liberties and "painfully aware of how often we fail to live up to those ideals." He worries that a nation defined by "commitment to a common creed — of equality, rights, and opportunity — and to a corresponding set of democratic ideals" will fall apart without a shared understanding of history.

On the left, scholars and activists "have pushed to redefine the United States as a country exceptional mostly for its flaws and crimes," he writes. On the right, politicians and commentators "have sought to gloss over those sins and, more recently, lay claim to the nation on behalf of 'heritage Americans'.”

"Most Americans are still proud of their country," he writes, but "the percentage has been declining with each successive generation, and the decline is particularly steep among young progressives."

Schools are spending less time teaching American history and civics, he writes. "Survey courses in American history are vanishing from college campuses," replaced by a focus on class, race and gender. Starting in the 1960s, academics became "suspicious of any national story as the handmaiden of ethnic nationalism, or white nationalism,” Harvard historian Jill Lepore told him.

In 1991, during the George H. W. Bush administration, national history standards produced by a UCLA historian were denounced for stressing America's failings and teaching students "that America is a rotten place," and rejected in a 99-1 Senate vote, Applebaum recalls.

Ten years later, the George W. Bush administration left history out of the accountability framework of No Child Left Behind. "Schools that struggled to make the grade on math and English" cut back on other subjects. Elementary schools cut the time devoted to social studies by a third, while high schools decided social studies was "the safest place to park the football coach, so that he could earn a full-time salary safely removed from the subjects tested under NCLB," Applebaum writes. "Within a decade, more than a third of social-studies educators were coaching sports or teaching phys ed."

Only 14 percent of eighth-graders test as proficient in history, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Checker Finn sees renewed focus on teaching American history and civics. For example, 17 states now award "civic seals" to recognize graduates' excellence in civic readiness, reports iCivics. He's also encouraged by the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, which has grown to some 300 members on 85 college campuses.

Two-thirds of Americans say schools should actively teach what it means to be an American, reports the America at 250 survey. Most say “schools should make a special effort to teach new immigrants about American values and beliefs,” but there's a big age gap: 84 percent of baby boomers say "yes" versus 63 percent of Gen Z .

The survey asked parents some of the same questions posed in a 1998 survey of parents' views of civic education, notes Finn. While 84 percent of parents in 1988 said America is a unique country that stands for something special in the world, that dropped to 62 percent in 2026. Sixty-seven percent in 1998 and 42 percent in 2026 said it was absolutely essential for schools to teach that America is a fundamentally good country."

Seventy percent of today's parents say it's essential for public schools to teach that we are all one nation regardless of background, he writes. That's a lot. But it was 85 percent in 1998.