How Trump Can Prepare Our Schools for America’s 250th

Next Fourth of July, America will turn 250. In the lead up to this celebration, the Trump administration has the coming school year to ensure every American child has an education that celebrates America and a future citizenry that will uphold free self-government. 

Trump’s Department of Education recently kicked off its preparation for this commemoration with an announced grant program for seminars on history and civics. The idea is to invite universities with “civic thought centers” — codeword for “conservative beachheads in large leftist state universities” — to receive federal funds to put on seminars in history and civics. Following upon this success, the White House launched “The Story of America” video series for schools on the historical events leading up to the American Founding. Fine opening salvos for placing American K-12 education on a war footing.

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” So did the American Founders decree in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, predating the Constitutional Convention itself by several months. America’s schools are publicly supported, even by the federal government, to ensure good government, and always have been. 

Even as the president sunsets the Department of Education, he can fulfill his original executive orders on patriotic, back-to-basics education for resisting and overcoming radical ideology bent on destroying the American experiment in representative self-government. And he can do so to celebrate America’s 250^th Birthday. Here’s how.

Give America a Model

Conservatives have historically been great at saying what they are against. Part of President Trump’s success, however, has been his masterful ability to cast a compelling vision of what conservatives are for. To commemorate America’s 250^th Birthday, Trump should create and promote a model for patriotic education that implements what The 1776 Report outlined in 2021.

First, the committee and the Department of Education should create a new set of model standards, especially for American history, civics, literature, and art. These standards should outline in detail the minimum specifics of what every American child ought to know about America. They should be woke-free, content-rich, pro-America, and honest. 

States, school boards, private schools, and homeschooling families can then use them as a blueprint or model for their own state standards and curriculum. These visionary sample standards will sideline those based on Howard Zinn, the National Council for Social Studies, and other far-left organizations that have dictated what schools teach about America for decades, even in deep red states.

Second, Pete Hegseth should completely overhaul America’s one federally run school district: the Department of Defense Education Activity. The curriculum should be reviewed thoroughly and independently — to avoid malicious compliance — to remove woke, discriminatory, and anti-American content. 

Where necessary, these should be replaced with robust, proven instructional materials. The teacher and administrator certification requirements and pipeline should be reconstituted to end the bureaucratic control woke officials have over who runs and teaches in the schools that educate America’s largely right-of-center military families. 

The DoDEA schools are the one area where President Trump has complete authority to shape K-12 education. These schools should be a model for America, they should serve America’s military families and the values they hold, and they should support the war-readiness of America’s military.

Be America’s Teacher

One title that people rarely grant President Trump is that of “teacher.” But when we consider his communication skills and successes, he may in fact be called “America’s Teacher.” Few figures in our history have had such a profound effect on the public consciousness and lexicon. And in this year of anticipatory celebration for America’s historic birthday, President Trump should embrace the role in three main ways.

First, we all know that how American government operates today is a far cry from what the Constitution intended. In no place has this come into starker contrast than the destruction of the coequality of the three federal branches, the dictates of the Deep State, and judicial tyranny.

President Trump should host one or more events or virtual town halls exclusively with K-12 students and their parents on the topic of the presidency. He should teach students about the great presidents in American history, how the presidency was meant to operate, what is happening today, and why America must return to the coequality of the branches and the rightful authority of the president over the executive branch. President Trump should teach America’s students about what he knows best: the presidency.

Second, President Trump is a storyteller. It’s somewhat unorthodox, but Trump’s ability to tell stories is a rare and dying skill. If history — as its etymology suggests and many have observed — is a true story of human events and ideas and conditions, then Trump should tell the story of America. 

Ahead of the 250th, the president should publish something like “The Trump History of America” for K-12 students that can serve as a definitive account of American history and an option for use by schools and families across the country. The story would be compelling, readable, and, with Trump telling the story, highly-engaging. And it would constitute an honest and accurate history of America that invites students to love and respect their country.

Third, President Trump should embark on a year-long American history tour. He should visit the key historical sites in American history and give addresses on the events, celebrating and promoting the heroes of America’s past. He might consider inviting students and schools in the area to attend and broadcast during the school day to allow schools to tune in. By lauding these historical moments and the men and women who made them happen, President Trump will remind and revive knowledge and love of America and its history, especially for America’s students.

The great English thinker G.K. Chesterton wrote that “Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.” This is especially true when it concerns the history and culture of a nation. 

With this 250th birthday celebration, America’s students are blessed to have President Trump in the White House. Through these bold education initiatives, President Trump has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use this celebration to transform the knowledge and love of America for the next generation of Americans, setting American education on a war footing for defending everything that makes America great.

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