Hope for the future

Daniel Gelernter attends Amity Senior High School in Woodbridge, Connecticut. He has overcome the indoctrination of his high school curriculum to achieve a love of country; his classmates are not so lucky. They have faithfully absorbed their teachers’ opinions and their textbooks’ misinformation. We first met young Mr. Gelernter reflecting on his high school experience in an article for the Weekly Standard last October. That article bleakly concluded:

[T]here are no lessons on the virtue of patriotism. Like the textbooks, my teachers are extremely charitable when discussing American enemies; from the Soviet Union to the Vietnamese Communists, they all get the benefit of the doubt. I would like to believe that this is only a temporary situation, perhaps one that a few well-placed educational reformers could begin to correct. But my fear is that it will take a long time to repair our public schools. Meanwhile, what will become of a country whose youngest citizens have been taught to have so little affection for it?

Showing how parental influence can overcome the effects of a defective high school education, Gelernter has acqured a love of country based on knowledge that I would hazard to guess runs a bit deeper than his teachers’. He is an outstanding young man of good humor and a worthy blog: Republican Dan. In high school Gelernter has fought a rearguard action in hostile territory. Thus the title of his Weekly Standard article: “An army of one.” Next fall, it’s on to Yale, where we trust he’ll find some allies to fight the good fight with him.

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