JMC partner program at George Fox University gives students crucial foundation in civic knowledge
View this in your browser ([link removed])
JMC Partner Program In the News!
The Jack Miller Center leverages the power of educators to teach our young people about America's history and founding principles, from K-12 through college.
Read below to see one example of the types of student programs we are establishing on college campuses across the country, working with our network of more than 1,000 professors. RealClear Wire ([link removed]) recently featured JMC's partner program at George Fox University, The John Dickinson Forum for the Study of America's Founding Principles.
Programs like the John Dickinson Forum are re-grounding civic education in America's history and founding principles and creating more knowledgeable young citizens.
The John Dickinson Forum: Teaching the Virtues of Self Government
By: Mike Sabo, editor of RealClear’s American Civics portal ([link removed]) .
“Some educators approach civics in terms of activism and protests,” Professor Mark David Hall notes, “but protest for its own sake is not useful in civic education.” As Hall notes, “Before students can be participants in self-government, they must have a knowledge of the basic principles of America’s constitutional order.
The John Dickinson Forum ([link removed]) at George Fox University provides students with this crucial foundation in civic knowledge.
The university’s Herbert Hoover Professor of Politics, Hall founded the Dickinson Forum five years ago “to encourage discussion and debate” about “America’s founding principles and current events as they relate to those principles.” A specialist in American political thought and early American Christianity, Hall has written or co-edited twelve books, including most recently, “Did America Have a Christian Founding? ([link removed]) ”
A partner program of the Jack Miller Center ([link removed]) , the Forum offers various activities for students, including lectures, discussions of books and current events, and debates. It has partnered with various institutions in the Pacific Northwest, making its programs available to students at other colleges and universities and the public at large.
The Forum is named after John Dickinson, an important but neglected American Founder. Dickinson played a critical role ([link removed]) in writing pro-liberty pamphlets prior to American independence, was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and was “one of the most thoughtful advocates for liberty in the Founding Era.” At one time the largest slaveholder in Delaware, Dickinson, influenced by his Quaker upbringing, eventually freed his slaves.
The Forum contributes to civic education by bringing in speakers each year to discuss American Founding principles. According to Hall, some speakers also give talks on individuals and movements in later generations who focused on those principles, such as Abraham Lincoln, whose statesmanship was heavily influenced by the Declaration of Independence. For example, historian Wilfred M. McClay recently spoke ([link removed]) on the Constitution’s role in contemporary civic education.
Planned speakers for the Spring 2022 semester will include Paul Miller of Georgetown University, Jason Ross of Liberty University, Kevin R.C. Gutzman of Western Connecticut State University and, tentatively, Ian Rowe of the Woodson Center/1776 Unites.
Hall says that students who participate in the Forum don’t get a merely triumphalist account of America. After the killing of George Floyd in 2020, he and an African-American colleague held a reading group on the problem of race and the United States. Discussions featured materials from both the 1619 Project and its critics and articles arguing both for and against reparations. Hall and his colleagues worked to promote “ideas instead of protests,” he says, and they “went out of their way to include students on all sides” of the current debate. He notes that this particular reading group was so popular that a new group had to be created to accommodate all the interested students.
Student reading groups are a major part of the Forum’s programming. Groups of around ten students convene each semester to discuss readings on liberty, equality, and human flourishing in America and throughout the world. Reading articles from The Economist and other top periodicals, students debate controversial topics such as the justice of Harvard’s affirmative action policies. Group members are also invited to attend dinners with the speakers the Forum brings to campus each semester.
Hall believes that a chief threat to civic education is the coarsening of political discourse. He points to efforts in Florida’s public schools as a hopeful sign that states are beginning to take civics more seriously.
An accomplished student of early American Christianity, Hall also highlights the important connection between upholding a “moral commitment for freedom” and religion, an increasingly overlooked aspect of civic education today. He points to a famous syllogism offered by the Library of Congress’s James Hudson on the relationship between religion and morality: virtue and morality are necessary for free republican government; religion is necessary for virtue and morality; therefore, religion is necessary for republican government.
Hall acknowledges that our circumstances have changed markedly since the Founding, when disputes were mainly between competing denominations of Christianity; today, different religions are vying to be respected in the public square. Nevertheless, he cites George Washington’s teaching that it is unlikely for a society to function well without a shared morality backed by religious instruction. Though Hall admits that Washington suggested that certain individuals could be moral without being religious, this achievement is highly unlikely for society as a whole.
Promoting the virtues of citizen self-government, along with the importance of morality and religion, the John Dickinson Forum looks to strengthen the foundations of the American polity. Click here to read the article on RealClear. ([link removed])
Click to learn how you can help more students learn about America ([link removed])
[link removed]
The battle for the soul of our nation will be won or lost in our classrooms ™ — Jack Miller
At the Jack Miller Center, that battle is our sole mission. We are the boots on the ground, working to bring the American political tradition and history back to the classroom, from K-12 through college. Please consider a tax-deductible gift ([link removed]) to JMC. Your donation, large or small, is an investment in the future of our country—for you, for your children, for your grandchildren.
Do you know others who may be interested? Please forward this email to your friends and contacts or share on your social media.
[link removed] Share ([link removed])
[link removed] https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Fgojmc.org%2Fnews_feature_george_fox_university Tweet ([link removed] https%3A%2F%2Fmailchi.mp%2Fgojmc.org%2Fnews_feature_george_fox_university)
[link removed] Post ([link removed])
About the Jack Miller Center
The Jack Miller Center is a 501(c)(3) public charity with the mission to reinvigorate education in America's founding principles and history. We work to advance the teaching and study of America's history, its political and economic institutions, and the central principles, ideas and issues arising from the American and Western traditions—all of which continue to animate our national life.
We support professors and educators through programs, resources, fellowships and more to help them teach our nation's students.
www.jackmillercenter.org
============================================================
Follow us!
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Facebook ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Twitter ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
** Website ([link removed])
** YouTube ([link removed])
** YouTube ([link removed])
** Instagram ([link removed])
** Instagram ([link removed])
The Jack Miller Center
[email protected]
484-436-2060
Our mailing address is:
3 Bala Plaza West, Suite 401, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004
Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can ** update your preferences ([link removed])
or ** unsubscribe from this list ([link removed])
.
