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Dr. Donna Hage, Marion County School Superintendent
Dr. Donna Hage, Marion County School Superintendent
I was recently asked to be the guest speaker at the Fairview 4th of July Celebration of The American Spirit.
It was a wonderful opportunity for not only myself, but my family, to return to this celebration of freedom, which has been held by the Fairview Community since 1976. Today, perhaps more than ever it is equally as important to hold a celebration of The American Spirit. So what is The American Spirit? It is defined as “a celebration of courage, determination, optimism, rugged individualism, and compassion.” Nearly 5 decades ago in Fairview and nearly 250 years ago in our nation, this American Spirit was honored and celebrated on July 4th.
If any of us would pick up a newspaper, listen to the radio, scroll through a Google search or social media trends — as many of us are prone to do on our cell phones these days — we would find some of the top headlines of 2021 and 2022:
The inauguration of our 46th President of the United States
A storming of the US Capitol to overturn the 2020 election
A revisiting of the Paris Climate Agreement, an international treaty aimed at limiting global warming
The crash of a container ship in the Suez Canal, which held up billions in trade for six days
A trial and conviction for George Floyd’s death
The launch of the rocket SpaceX that sent Crew Dragon astronauts into space for the first operational spaceflight by a private company owned by Elon Musk
A collapse of a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Florida, killing 98 residents
The 32nd Summer Olympic games in Tokyo, a year after being postponed due to an international pandemic, where US athletes, despite the delay, stress and uncertainty, brought home 113 medals
Withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan after a two-decade war where the lives of over 2,400 US service personnel were lost
Implementation of the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans abortions after 6 weeks of conception
The endorsement of the world’s first vaccine against malaria by the World Health Organization
The Atlanta Braves win of their fourth World Series, an honor they have not achieved since 1996
Tornadoes ripping through the South and Midwest, killing at least 91 people
The authorization of two pills to treat COVID-19 by the FDA, after a two years-long fight against the virus
The courts block of a vaccine mandate
The Russian invasion of Ukraine
International sanctions announced against Russia
North Korea resumes nuclear weapons test launches
Amazon rainforest reaches dire new record for deforestation
Plans for new gun regulations announced by President Biden
A case of wild polio confirmed for the first time in 30 years in the world
Highest inflation rates recorded in 40 years
21 elementary students and teachers killed by a teenage shooter in a school in Uvalde, Texas
Bipartisan discussions for a legislative ban on assault rifles
For the first time in US history, gasoline average price tops $5
Supreme Court Justice Breyer announces retirement from active duty
Taking a moment to remember the headlines of the past two years is important for each of us because in the words of David McCullough, an historian, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, there are three main points that we can take from learning about our history:
The effects of character and its impact upon destiny.
The importance of teaching the current and future generation.
The value of actively — and I say actively — learning and listening to history daily.
According to McCullough, we must start to listen to and teach about the past in order to learn about the way a person’s character can affect their destiny — our destiny. “Nothing happens in isolation. Everything that happens has consequences. We are all part of a larger stream of events, past, present, and future. We are all the beneficiaries of those who went before us — who built the cathedrals, who braved the unknown, who gave of their time and service, and who kept faith in the possibilities of the mind and the human spirit,” writes McCullough.
Now, we all hear a lot today about hopelessness, discouragement, suffering, disillusionment, and fear in society, our leaders and this current generation. But, McCullough reminds us that this was not unlike the year 1776. He writes, “The year 1776, celebrated as the birth year of the nation and for the signing of the Declaration of Independence, was for those who carried the fight for independence forward, a year of all-too-few victories, of sustained suffering, disease, hunger, desertion, cowardice, disillusionment, defeat, terrible discouragement, and fear, as they would never forget, but also [it was a year] of phenomenal courage and bedrock devotion to country, and that, too they would never forget.”
It is a celebration like July 4th, in a West Virginia small town community of approximately 400, that reminds us of the power and importance to spread the love of devotion to country. If you look around, there are young and old alike, side by side, celebrating this American Spirit in Fairview on July 4th. I bring up the size of the community and age of individuals because the challenge to remember and celebrate the qualities of The American Spirit do not just rest solely on the shoulders of the many and those of previous generations.
Now, I have been guilty of taking my 9 and 11 year-olds on road trips, through museums and historical collections a time or two. I’m sure they think the same thing I did when my father or former teachers took me to the covered bridge in Philippi, battlefields of Gettysburg, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, or monuments in Washington, D.C. I looked at the art and writings through the eyes of a youth or teenager and thought, this is neat, but what do these old people have in common with me?
My father and teachers were actively reminding me of The American Spirit and how it is not defined by age. McCullough sums it up perfectly, “We see their faces in the old paintings done later in their lives or looking at us from the paper money in our wallets, and we see the awkward teeth and the powdered hair, and we think of them as elder statesmen. But George Washington, when he took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge in 1775, was forty-three, and he was the oldest of them. Jefferson was thirty-three when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. John Adams was forty. Benjamin Rush — one of the most interesting of them all — was thirty when he signed the Declaration. They were young people, feeling their way, improvising, trying to do what would work. They had no money, no navy, no real army. There wasn't a bank in the entire country. It was a country of just 2,500,000 people, 500,000 of whom were held in slavery.” It took me a while to realize, as I’ve grown, that our founding fathers were not unlike myself and this generation of young people and adults that many will say are disillusioned and lost today.
“Few nations in the world know when they were born. We know exactly when we began and why we began and who did it,” writes McCullough. And so we think, what do we do to inspire this kind of American Spirit, an attitude of self-determination and individual liberty made manifest by the US Declaration of Independence?
Beyond the study of history, one of the things that I like most about McCullough is he stresses the importance of great teachers and the “faith in education as the bulwark of freedom.” He writes, “The great teachers — the teachers who influence you, who change your lives — almost always, I’m sure, are the teachers who love what they are teaching.”
We have all had these teachers, whether in the classroom, church, or a community member. McCullough champions Margaret McFarland, a teacher, who said “attitudes aren’t taught, they’re caught. If the teacher has enthusiasm for the subject at hand, the student catches that, be it in second grade or graduate school. Show them what you love.” McCullough goes on to praise an education in the humanities — not just what the close study of a book can do “as a nourishing staple of life,” but also for “the great thing about arts — that you can only learn to do it by doing it.”
Do we not continue to navigate through the qualities of The American Spirit that were themes in the literature of the 18th century? The qualities of “venturesomeness, physical and moral daring, resourcefulness in emergencies, indifference to negligible details, boundless hope and confidence in the morrow.” Civic responsibility, literature, art and music all solidify the experience of The American Spirit.
And, McCullough reminds us of the value of what we teach, as we may have become accustomed to feeling defeated or disillusioned with America. “History is not the story of heroes entirely. It is often the story of cruelty and injustice and short sightedness. There are monsters, there is evil, there is betrayal. That's why people should read Shakespeare and Dickens as well as history — they will find the best, the worst, the height of noble attainment and the depths of depravity.” There is a reason why “there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds,” McCullough writes.
But, he challenges every American to extend the lessons they learn in the classroom to life. “Sometime, somewhere along the line, memorize a poem. Sometime, somewhere along the line, go out in a field and paint a picture, for your own pleasure. Sometime, somewhere along the line, plant a tree….write your mother a letter. And sometime, somewhere along the line, do something for your country.” If our young people “catch attitudes” from others, wouldn’t it be even more powerful to catch it in a classroom, in a community — just like the example set here in Fairview with this celebration?
I have often remarked, “schools cannot do this alone.” High achievement is nearly always a joint effort — “America has been a joint effort all down the years and we must continue in that spirit,” reminds McCullough. There is power in unity, and it doesn’t have to come in large numbers to start a movement. The power does not necessarily always come in numbers, but it comes in responsibility and moral choices. Think about it.
McCullough writes that in the time of 1776, “Philadelphia, the largest American city, had all of thirty thousand people, a small town by our standards. The same week the Continental Congress voted for independence, the British landed 32,000 troops on Staten Island. In other words, they landed a military force larger than the entire population of our largest city [at that time].” Today, “we live in a world where there are twenty cities with populations over ten million people.” Think of the magnitude of what occurred in Philadelphia in 1776.
Just as education is not just an act of the schools, our responsibility to be involved in history extends beyond ourselves. McCullough reminds us that it has been nearly 60 years since a President of the United States has asked us to do something for our country. Ronald Reagan later posed the question, “How can we love our country and not love our countrymen? And loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they’re sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory.”
If we think we are in difficult and uncertain times, McCullough tells us, “There never was a golden time past of smooth sailing only” in our nation’s history. “Just as we don't know how things are going to turn out for us, those who went before us didn't either. It's all too easy to stand on the mountaintop as a historian or biographer [or in a social media post] and find fault with people for why they did this or didn't do that, because we're not involved in it, we're not there inside it, we're not confronting what we don't know — as those who preceded us were.”
As an example of The American Spirit, become involved — to celebrate the accomplishments of the past as we do today in Fairview on this 4th of July, but also to demonstrate the moral responsibility and courage of our forefathers and create solutions for tomorrow. Just last week, I listened to a powerful presentation by educator Chris Emdin, a professor at the University of Southern California. He said, “young people are not oppressed by you telling them what happened in their past.” He reminded educators, “You are somebody’s ancestor. Go teach like it.” We are faced today, just like in 1776, with a mountain. In the unifying words of McCullough, “Climb the mountain not to plant YOUR flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
Dr. Donna Hage, Marion County School Superintendent
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