How to Raise an American 1776 Fun and Easy Tools, Tips, and Activities to Help Your Child Love This Country

1 THE PATRIOTISM GAP "We want to make our children feel that the mere fact of being Americans makes them better off. . . . This is not to blind us at all to our own shortcomings; we ought steadily to try to correct them; but we have absolutely no grounds to work on if we don't have a firm and ardent Americanism at the bottom of everything." Theodore Roosevelt =What does it mean to be an American? That's what USA Today wanted to know last Fourth of July, and their readers told them. For Jeff Stark of Dublin, Ohio, being an American is "to live in the hometown of hope and dreams . . . where one hot dog stand can turn into two . . . where a second chance always follows a first . . . to live in the land of eternal promise for a better day . . . the Wrigley Field of nations." Another Ohio patriot, Mel Mauer, says, "To be American is to be uniquely free." Kathleen Butler of Wichita, Kansas, loves America for its diversity, "We are as American as apple pie, or stir-fried rice, or enchiladas or curried chicken. And because of that we are the luckiest people on the planet." Being American? "It's about appreciating my country, loving it deeply and doing what I can to make the USA a better place." That was how World War II veteran Ezio Moscatelli of Columbia, Missouri, put his patriotism into words. Opportunity, freedom, diversity, and duty. Four Americans . . . four patriots . . . four different ways of loving their country. How about you? Do you love America? Are you the type who gets a lump in your throat when the flag passes by on the Fourth of July? Do you get goose bumps when "The Star-Spangled Banner" echoes in an Olympic stadium? Does a lemonade stand manned by a determined eight-year-old on a hot summer day make you smile? Do America's unique history and values make you proud of your country? If you said yes to these questions, congratulations! You're probably a patriot. But here's a much harder question. Do you believe your children, deep down, love this country and what it stands for, just as you do? You might be surprised to find out how your kids really feel about America. This wake-up call of a statistic shocked us. It may shock you, too. If given the chance, almost one in four young Americans under thirty say they would rather live in another country. That's what an Independence Day poll on patriotism taken by Fox News in 2005 found when it asked Americans: "All things being equal, would you prefer to live in the United States or would you prefer to live in some other country?" Most of us probably feel like almost 95 percent of the respondents over thirty who said they preferred the good old USA. No big surprise there, but nearly a quarter of our young peoplethe very Americans who are supposed to fight the war on terror, beat back the economic challenge of China and India, and keep our country strong, safe, and prosperouswould hightail it out of here if they could! And an even higher number of our young teens are pessimistic about America's future. In a 2005 Time magazine cover story about thirteen- year-olds, the editors themselves were surprised at how gloomy young teens have become about America: "In a shift from just five years ago, when the new millennial teens were generally optimistic about the future . . . almost half, or 46 percent, believe that by the time they are their parents' age, the U.S. will be a worse place to live in than it is now." A startling percentage of our youngsters have little or no hope for America's future. Almost half, it seems, have no confidence in their own abilities to ensure tBlyth, Myrna is the author of 'How to Raise an American 1776 Fun and Easy Tools, Tips, and Activities to Help Your Child Love This Country', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307339218 and ISBN 0307339211.