The education of citizens is an education in love. This assertion may strike some as strange, unless what is meant by the word “citizen” is properly understood. To be a citizen of a particular place is to say that place is your own and that you belong to that place. And if we agree with Aristotle’s understanding of human beings as “political animals”, then there cannot be a nation with a citizenry of one. We are citizens together with others whom we call our own by virtue of shared principles, history, culture, and language. When we claim the title of citizen, we claim, and are claimed by, our fellow citizens and the place we collectively call home. To be claimed in this way means that we do not belong entirely to ourselves and thus are bound by certain obligations and duties.
The imposition of duties upon us creates a tension and begs the question as to why we who imagine ourselves to be free, rational, and volitional creatures would want to be citizens at all. We enjoy the company of others, living in community gives us a sense of belonging, and human relationship is a net positive for most of us, but to be bound by duty and obligation, to have responsibility for others and for our home seems quite a heavy burden. The answer lies in our human nature; a nature that is relational and which longs to belong to a place and a people- to be a part of, love, and serve something greater than ourselves.
The Greeks attributed this desire to be a citizen to nature itself. Being a political animal means that, like other animals, we have been fitted by nature to thrive in society where we can engage in politics, serve our country (or polis), and reproduce ourselves through the creation of families (satisfying another longing of human beings- to live forever through our offspring). These things are good for us as human beings in the same way that fertile soil, sunlight, and water are good for trees and plants- they allow and encourage flourishing.
Christians, the Puritans most relevantly to us as Americans, agreed with the Greeks as to the goods of citizenship and relational life, but differed on its origin. For the Christian, our longing for relationship and desire for meaningful community are evidence for our bearing the image of God. We reflect a portion of the divine nature, which is eternally and perfectly relational (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost), when we seek out, participate in, and cultivate human relationships. Whether it is on the level of friendship, the family, or our fellow citizens, we were made for relationship with others and our identity as citizens is therefore deeply satisfying to our souls. Our nature then, whether understood as deriving from Nature or God, impels us toward society and relationship- toward citizenship.
The claim for the goodness of citizenship may still be objected to on the grounds that our nature impels us toward many things, not all of which are good or desirable. After all, Jean-Paul Sartre tells us “hell is other people” and the costs of relational life may be too dear to pay for the satisfaction it might bring. Here too, though, an inspection of our nature is instructive. If we accept the premise that to be burdened by others or to be bound by duty to serve our country is a bad thing for human beings, then we implicitly endorse the parallel premise that the freer human beings are, the better life is for them. This is true only to an extent though. Of course, living under tyranny or without real freedom is a terrible thing, but so is its opposite. Total, unencumbered freedom without limit is appealing to us, but ultimately does not satisfy our deepest longings and eventually becomes destructive of freedom itself.
To imagine ourselves as utterly free beings is to gravely mistake what we are as human beings. We are mortal and so ultimately, we are constrained by death. Furthermore, we are finite in our ability to know and so we are incapable of knowing what the right and good choice is in every instance. Finally, we are divided within ourselves, a race of Jekylls and Hydes, to the point that even when we know what is right and good, we do not always choose it. The Greeks and the Christians agree here again: our nature limits us or is not capable (due to its fallenness) of being in any way we wish. There are things which are good for us and worthy of pursuit to attain. Perfect freedom is not one of them. The goal of education, and the task of educators, is to teach students how to live well with freedom, understanding that human freedom is inextricably bound to responsibility and duty.
This conflict in the heart of human beings will never be resolved without the work of education and the training of the human heart and mind toward the things which are conducive to true human flourishing. In the classical tradition of the West, informed by our Greek, Roman, and Christian heritage, those things which promote human flourishing are the transcendental ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful. In twenty-first century America, the question becomes “what does it mean to learn the true, do the good, and love the beautiful as a citizen of this country today?”
The Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum aims to answer this question for any student who wishes to know it. With a rich and thorough examination of American history from the founding era through reconstruction, students will learn the true, in all its greatness and misery, about the people and the land they call their own. In the study of our founding documents, the philosophies which undergird them, and the men who crafted them, students will begin to appreciate the fragility of the freedoms they enjoy and the imperative for each of us, as citizens, to do the good every day. Finally, as their knowledge of our country’s history and political system increases, they will become capable of loving it in a way they would not have been able to otherwise. They will love not out of compulsion or under false pretenses. They will be able to recognize the good, condemn what is evil, and still hold hope for becoming better in the future. Only when we truly know a thing can we love it and only when we love something are we willing to serve and sacrifice for it. Only when citizens have been educated to love their country ordinately are they prepared to enjoy the privileges of citizenship and to bear its burdens with pride, all with the knowledge that they belong to a people and a place, and those people and that place belong to them.
