The American Freedom Curriculum

A key first step to saving our K-12 educational system

The first obligation of our K-12 educational system should be to ground our young citizens in American civics and history, including the First Principles. To fulfill that promise, we should adopt an American Freedom Curriculum.

Thomas Jefferson explained in his influential Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), that the most important and legitimate reason for public education was “that of rendering the people safe, as they are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty.”

Our educators should provide all of our students an excellent grounding in our form of self-government, including its historical and philosophical underpinnings – with a special emphasis on our First Principles. Although there are some noble and excellent efforts to address these challenges, the reality is that current efforts are too weak, disparate, dispersed, and diluted to make the dramatic changes we need.  We face an educational crisis in American civics and history.

To address this educational crisis, each state should establish and implement an American Freedom Curriculum with specific, measurable expectations for students in each grade. The curriculum should comprehensively address the First Principles, civics, American history, and comparative political science.

In elementary school, students should be able to describe the basic features of American government and the First Principles, as well as key historical figures.

In middle school, our students should comprehend the contours of American history and the ideas behind it.

In high school our students should be learning deep concepts; debating policies of all parties in light of principles; role playing; writing position papers; speaking in public; asking hard questions; conducting research; participating in public service; and even creating disciplinary knowledge.

Such an educational program would best fan the flame of freedom for generations
to come.

 

For more about the American Freedom Curriculum and other reforms, buy a copy of America’s Survival Guide..


 

More Praise for America's Survival Guide

"America's Survival Guide is a bold and insightful work that should be taken seriously by those concerned with the future of America. We ignore it at our peril."
Congressman Joe Knollenberg

 “Michael Warren is the Paul Revere of the 21st century, warning of an invasion of the American spirit that threatens to eviscerate the country’s founding principles and rot the nation from within. He documents the historical illiteracy that is truly dumbing down the future of America, its children. It’s time for America to answer this intellectual and spiritual call-to-arms.” – Richard Burr, The Detroit News, Associate Editor, Editorial Page

 

"America's Survival Guide describes with detail and passion the dangers that come from abandoning the "First Principles" upon which this nation was founded. But this important book offers more than a diagnosis and despair, it presents a reasoned program for restoring the U.S. Constitution its proper place at the center of American society and government. The book draws on history, politics and education to make a powerful case for freedom and fighting for it."

--John Engler, former Governor of Michigan

Read more praise for America's Survival Guide