February 2022 News from Core Virtues | |
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In February, lovers think of Valentines, but Core Virtues schools focus on a Valentine to our country: the civic virtues of justice, honesty, love of country, and loyalty. These leap to life in the classroom as we commemorate both Presidents' Day and Black History Month. The Presidents we historically commemorate (Washington and Lincoln) strongly embody love of country, as does this month's heroine, Founding Mother Abigail Adams. Meanwhile Elizabeth Jennings reminds us of a crusade for justice on streetcars that pre-dated Rosa Parks and proved that justice could be blind. Check out our Presidents' Day and Black History Month recommendations. |
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As a girl, she was more interested in reading than needlepoint, held strong opinions and wielded a wicked quill pen. She married for love instead of status -- the struggling young lawyer, John Adams, who led the push for independence in the American Revolution. If she was not by his side, Abigail was always there with sharp and witty letters to advise him. When he was in Europe (for years at a time), she ran the farm and educated their five children. Abigail and John exchanged more than twelve hundred letters, in which she made sure he understood events on the home front. She shared her husband's life-long rejection of slavery, which she regarded as a moral evil and a threat to the republic, and also encouraged him to "remember the ladies," when writing new laws, warning him that "all men would be tyrants" if allowed. We have wonderful biographies of this exceptional Founding Mother. | |
Rosa Parks is a famous twentieth century name, but it was Elizabeth Jennings who first sued for racial justice in transportation in 1854, when she was denied a seat on a New York City streetcar (though New York was a free state and she was a free woman). Represented by future U.S. President Chester Arthur, Lizzie won her case, the first for equal rights in public transportation in U.S. history. The verdict reveals the triumph of justice over prejudice in New York even before the Civil War. "The arc of history bends toward justice," contended Martin Luther King, Jr., and this story bears out his intuition. | |
Our Presidents' Day recommendations provide insight not just into Washington and Lincoln, but Adams, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and others. | |
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In an age when we are increasingly encouraged to consider ourselves “citizens of the world,” and when many elementary school curricula include units on “global citizenship,” how relevant is love of country anymore?
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