Product Description

Do you love America? Are you proud to call this country your home? Now, what about your kids? You want them to love America as much as you do, but when popular culture tells them it’s cooler to bash this country than to love it, how can you teach them to be proud and loyal citizens?
As mothers themselves, bestselling author Myrna Blyth and former presidential speechwriter Chriss Winston have struggled with the same dilemma. Shocked by the growing patriotism gap, they set out to create a real-world resource all parents can use to teach their kids about the greatness of America’s past, the promise of its future, and the important role each of us plays in this democracy. How to Raise an American shows you how to make patriotism a priority without it becoming a chore for you or your kids.
This practical guide offers tips, games, activities, quizzes, and information you can use to make patriotism part of your family’s daily life, including:

- 60-Minute Solutions that easily and seamlessly
instill a love of this country
- Dinner Table Debate topics that will have
the whole family talking
- Road trip ideas that bring America’s history to life
- Books and movies that exemplify our shared ideals
- Inspiring stories of American courage, honor, and ingenuity
- Fun and educational ways to celebrate American holidays
like the Fourth of July and Veterans Day

Blyth and Winston consulted prominent historians, academics, military leaders, politicians, au-thors, scholars, film crit ics, and parents around the country to bring you a truly useful guide. Part treatise on patriotism, part American history primer, part civics lesson, this book is the antidote to the virulent America bashing our children hear every day.
Inspiring and practical, How to Raise an American is a must for every patriot—parent and child.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76131 in eBooks
• Published on: 2007-03-20
• Released on: 2007-03-20
• Format: Kindle Book
• Number of items: 1

From Publishers Weekly
Patriotism begins at home, so say the authors of this guide for parents dismayed by the perceived negativity emanating from public schools, Hollywood, the recording industry and the news media. The resulting cynicism separates them from "Americans who believe that we are the most privileged people on earth." Blyth, a former editor-in-chief of Ladies' Home Journal, and Winston, the first woman to head the White House speechwriting office, envision their book as a toolbox that can be used to redress this "Patriotism Gap." Dinner table debates on topics such as "When do you feel most American?" can stimulate discussion, while the "media virus" can be combated by viewing some of the "100 All-American Movies" (war films figure prominently). Although quick to praise examples of national virtue, Blyth and Winston come down hard on individuals and institutions that address the more unsavory aspects of American history and culture. (Textbook authors get notably thumped.) Fostering a heightened sense of civic awareness is a laudable goal. However, as with any other parental advice guide, moms and dads will have to cherry pick the ideas that reflect the values they want to transmit to their children.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Myrna Blyth is the bestselling author of Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness—and Liberalism—to the Women of America. The longtime editor in chief of Ladies’ Home Journal and the founding editor of More magazine, she is now a columnist for National Review Online. Blyth also chairs the President’s Commission on White House Fellows and is a member of the Justice Department’s National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women. She is married, has two sons, and lives in New York.

Chriss Winston was the first woman to head the White House Office of Speechwriting, serving in that position under President George H. W. Bush. The author of several books and a longtime Washington political communications professional, she was also deputy assistant secretary of labor under President Reagan and later served as a senior official at the U.S. Information Agency. She now heads her own communications consultancy, CorporateWord, and is also a director of the White House Writers Group. Winston lives near Washington, D.C., with her husband and son.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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 people—the 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 prosperous—would 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 that our country will remain a good place to live when they are ready to bring up their own children.

Here’s another somewhat startling statistic: In a 2006 Scholastic magazine poll, 80 percent of the kids said that they didn’t want to grow up to be president. The fact that our country was a place where a youngster from the humblest of circumstances could become the country’s leader was once very much part of the American dream. But thirty thousand children in grades 1 to 8 who participated in the Scholastic survey, said, “Thanks but no thanks” to the most important job in the world. In 2004, more than 80 percent of teens in an ABC/

Weekly Reader survey also said they didn’t want to be president. Over 54 percent, both girls and boys from all ethnic backgrounds, thought they could be president, but they’d rather not. The primary reason? They just weren’t interested.

Most families in our country have experienced a better lifestyle in recent years than Americans have enjoyed at any other time in our nation’s past, so these statistics are more than a little confusing. How can some kids today seem to be so negative or apathetic about the country that gives them so much? Why are some so downright uninterested and disillusioned they neither believe America is a special place with a special role to play in the world nor feel a responsibility to be the shapers of America’s destiny as their parents and grandparents were before them?

It’s not all kids, of course. Talk to any group of U.S. Marines or soldiers on a Baghdad street, and you’ll see what America’s young men and women can be and can do. But there’s a disturbing gap separating far too many of our young people from the vast majority of Americans who believe that we are the most privileged people on earth to live in this great country. Call it the Patriotism Gap.

If we, as a nation, allow this growing cynicism to continue to infect our youngest generations, we put them and our country’s future at risk. And the truth is your children could be next to “fall into the Gap.”

This book aims to help parents bridge the Patriotism Gap by instilling a healthy love of country in our children. After all, it is part of our responsibility as Americans and as parents to teach our kids what this nation stands for. To teach them to be grateful for all our country gives to her own people and to people around the world. To teach them about the heroes and the history that will make our children proud to be Americans once again.

We should also help them build the backbone they will need to stand up to those who would harm our country from afar as well as those critics in schools and in the media who tell them and teach them over and over again a dark, negative story of America. Our enemies have been using vast resources to misrepresent our way of life and to indoctrinate their children, whenever and wherever they can, to hate America. Certainly, the least we ought to do is teach our children to value our nation. To put it quite simply: America’s existence as “the shining city on the Hill” really does depend on it.

But how can we bridge this growing Patriotism Gap in very practical ways? First, to understand it, we’ve got to understand “us,” who we are as Americans. Then, we’ve got to understand what’s causing this disconnect, the “Bad Influencers,” as we call them, who are turning our kids off on America. And last, parents need to know what they can do about it.

In this book, we provide real-world ideas and resources, including Dinner Table Debates to have with your family and 60-Minute Solutions that can help you find time in your busy schedule to help your children learn to love America.

What They Don’t Learn in Schools

We know that today it’s not easy to raise a child to be a proud and patriotic American, especially one who understands what has made our country both different and special.

Once upon a time, American children were taught in the classroom from the early grades onward about our country’s great achievements and greatest achievers. In history, civics, and social studies classes, America was held up as what it is: the world’s oldest democracy that has a unique place in the world. Not only did kids recite the Pledge of Allegiance, but they were taught the truth beyond the Pledge’s simple words. As Americans, we do live in the country unlike any other, one that offers hope and opportunity for all and has a long and proud history of sacrifices made for the freedom of others.

Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln were portrayed, not as the deeply flawed, neurotic, or hypocritical human beings they often are today, but as heroes, extraordinary men of wisdom, courage, and vision—men who were able to change the course of history because of their character and their extraordinary actions. Yes, for decades, learning about our history, admiring our heroes, and developing good citizens were fundamental parts of American education, as important as learning those three R’s. But not anymore. The awful truth is that kids learn too little at school about American history, and much of what they do learn is more likely to contribute to the problem of the Patriotism Gap rather than solving it. Equally troublesome, far too many youngsters suffer from this lack of positive civic education from the earliest grades through their college years. Too often, they learn what’s wrong with America before they are told what’s right.

Perhaps many social studies teachers seem to lack perspective because they have actually studied very little history themselves. That sad fact leaves them little choice but to rely almost exclusively on textbooks that espouse such a politically correct view of America’s past it’s no wonder our children’s view of their country is so negative. New York University professor Diane Ravitch in The Language Police, her critique of current history textbooks, found so many examples of anti-American bias in the books she reviewed, she wrote that it often seems “every culture in the ...

Customer Reviews

The Next 50 Years Will Be Hard on American Kids
It's important to know where you stand, whose side you're on, and why. In the gathering storm of anti-Western, illiberal and theocratic ideologies asserting themselves in the developing world, our kids will be faced with mounting pressures to give in: to talk politically correct talk, to accommodate medieval fundamentalists, to do business with repressive regimes, to tolerate intolerant people. The decades ahead will test the American spirit as we engage societies that don't share our basic values and understanding of man and his place in the world.

"How to Raise an American" is an indispensable guide to explaining our culture to our kids. The schools won't do it, encumbered as they are by politics, special interests and educrat fads. The media can't do it; they're focused on what's wrong with our society and too often, their self criticism turns into self loathing. Religions don't seem to be helping much, drawing lines of division and dogma in a self-righteousness and insularity that's un-American. The culture does it, in its own way, by promoting individualism, social conscience and the pursuit of happiness, but culture is focused on the new, the innovative, sometimes the weird -- not first principles.

We have to be explicit with our kids. We live in the freest, richest, longest living, most dynamic, most inventive, most diverse society ever built. The 1776 tools, tips and activities in this handbook give parents some great ideas for teaching the history that brought us to this point and the important American values that continue to draw eager immigrants from every nation to our shores. Myrna Blyth and Chriss Winston write in a breathy, accessible style that's easy to read, and the book is a well-organized, carefully-crafted resource. New parents should get started early: "How to Raise an American" provides bullet points for kindergarten through the eight grades. Sullen and rebellious teenagers may not sit still for some of the patriotic exercises, but as the Jesuits say, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

It's easy to be cynical about patriotism, to cast it in merely right wing/left wing terms. But in the history of mankind, America is exceptional, and our children have to know what we believe, why we believe it and how to proudly live as Americans.

A Must Read for ALL Parents and Teachers
I think this book is a MUST READ for all parents and teachers. It talks about what is good about this country. America isn't perfect but we certainly have a lot to be proud of and this book speaks to that. That's all. It doesn't denigrate other countries. With all the America-bashing around the world (as well as here), I don't think there's anything wrong with positive reinforcement of our country. To that end, the book suggests conversation topics to start discussing our country and the world--discussion of both/all sides of the topic. That's what we do in this country.

I found the projects section to be very creative and would appeal to a broad range of ages of children. All of the teachers I've known would find this section particularly appealing. I also liked the sections on places to visit in every state and organizations to look into depending on the child's areas of interest. It is sometimes hard to come up with vacations and activities that have to compete with Disneyland and the Disney Channel. Mindless activities abound out there and this book provides activities that are educational, creative and fun, all at the same time. The book, movie, and website sections gave me a lot of suggestions that I had not even thought about.

I think a lot of people (who have not read the book) are looking at this as a right wing piece, but it isn't at all. I really don't understand where they are getting that. How is making hard tack during a discussion of the Civil War ideological?? If they had read the book, they would realize what this book is and is not. It's not an ideological book, it encourages discussion (both sides).

In closing, again, I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with kids or any teacher!!

This may be the most important book published in years
With a son-in-law still serving in the military after his retirement and a grandson having just graduated from West Point and going to Ranger school, imagine my shock to hear our 15-year-old granddaughter telling her brother that America isn't worth fighting for. I could hear her ancestors (who have fought in every war the USA has faced, beginning with the Revolution and French/Indian Wars) rolling in their collective graves. However, I'm smart enough to know not to argue with her. I have, though, been looking for a way to change her mind.

Then I stumbled on this book at the library. THANK YOU, Ms. Blyth and Ms. Winston. This is exactly what I need. Fortunately I love history, especially American history, and can easily take the projects and ideas in the book and develop them to fit our family.

Furthermore, I am relieved and encouraged to see that others have not only recognized the problem but have studied it and have found solutions to offer. It's always nice to know that one isn't fighting alone.