Etched forever in my memories of this holiday season is the gaze of my eleven month old grandson looking at his mother with utmost admiration, love and trust. She is giving her all, day and night, to nurture, love, and educate his voracious mind despite feeling tired, overwhelmed, and inadequate. In that gaze of love and trust, I have come to recognize the hope of our republic.
The Hillsdale publication Imprimis recently plead with the nation to remember to educate ourselves on the magnificence of our history. In a day when the New York Times 1619 project “promotes the teaching that slavery, not freedom, as the defining fact of American history”, this task is no small responsibility. One person to whom we owe responsibility, as we recreate and discuss his life, is Thomas Jefferson. School children today are taught that he wrote the Declaration of Independence and owned slaves. Little other commentary is offered beyond pointing out the error of slavery. Forgotten in the mainstream education is, that true to our national heritage, he made changes that would prohibit slavery going forward in the burgeoning new country. As I read the historical perspectives below, I feel saddened that these ideas are left out of many US History courses today; I feel hopeful because we can include them in the education of our children.
They don’t learn that when our nation first expanded, it was into the Northwest Territory, and that slavery was forbidden in that territory. They don’t learn that the land in that territory was ceded to the federal government from Virginia, or that it was on the motion of Thomas Jefferson that the condition of the gift was that slavery in that land be eternally forbidden. If schoolchildren learned that, they would come to see Jefferson as a human being who inherited things and did things himself that were terrible, but who regretted those things and fought against them. And they would learn, by the way, that on the scale of human achievement, Jefferson ranks very high. There’s just no question about that, if for no other reason than that he was a prime agent in founding the first republic dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
As parents we are ultimately responsible for the education of our children so that we can return the gaze of our trusting and loving children with equal trust in them and the future they will steer. Moving forward always requires facing challenges of “evil in and around” us. We can instill confidence and hope that we have the fortitude to right the wrongs, love freedom and equality, embrace our heritage for good, and live true to Greatness of the American dream.
In this quest, we preserve the best of our humanity; we protect the hope captured in the gaze of a mother and father returning the unconditional love of a child.
