As Authoritarians Rise Abroad, Who Should Teach Democracy in American K-12 Schools?

Although the United States is a wonderfully diverse country with vast resources and a population of more than 330,000,000 people from virtually every race, religion, and background, the country can’t seem to find enough teachers to educate its children. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly eight out of 10 public schools reported struggling to hire teachers for the 2023-24 school year. Widespread teacher shortages have been driving school districts across the country to hire non-U.S. citizens to teach in K-12 public schools.

Located just outside the nation’s capital, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), one of the country’s largest school districts, recently hired teachers from eight foreign countries as part of a new program. “I am really hoping this enables us to have a stable teaching workforce at Woodlawn for the next three to five years,” said FCPS Woodlawn Elementary School’s principal, Laura Elliott.

Virginia’s teacher shortage is not an anomaly. Shortages have forced Texas and South Carolina, for example, to rely more on non-U.S. citizen educators on H1-B visas than other states.

And in July, Pennsylvania approved legislation that allows non-U.S. citizens to teach in the state’s classrooms. “We can finally say we’ve delivered for non-U.S. citizen teachers,” proclaimed Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz. “I learned that here in Pennsylvania, for a teacher to obtain certification to teach, they must [be] a U.S. citizen. I found this to be absurd. It just didn’t make sense,” she remarked during a celebratory press event on August 1.

To be sure, from a practical perspective, non-citizen K-12 educators can help mitigate the teacher shortage. They can also potentially inspire appreciation for other countries and cultures and offer high-quality instruction in a wide variety of subjects, from foreign languages to physics to chemistry.

But, as with any policy, it is worth considering any disadvantages and unintended consequences. Educators have a unique responsibility to teach patriotism as well as the rights and responsibilities of American citizenship. How would someone who has never enjoyed that citizenship know how to teach it?

Consider the Virginia standards and curriculum framework for history and social studies adopted in 2015 and still in effect, which delineates the “content that teachers in Virginia are expected to teach and students are expected to learn.”

Virginia specifically requires educators to teach kindergartners about patriotism, defined as a “feeling of respect for and love of country and state” and categorized as “essential knowledge.” Teachers are expected to introduce Virginia’s five-year-olds to national symbols and rituals such as the American flag and the Pledge of Allegiance, as well as holidays such as Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. Virginia’s broader standards for history and social studies require educators to teach and students to learn about citizens’ rights, duties, and responsibilities, including “voting” and “defending the nation.”

Similarly, Pennsylvania’s standards assert that the state’s public schools “were created to educate children to be useful citizens, loyal to the principles upon which our Republic was founded, and aware of their duties as citizens to maintain those ideals.” Teachers are explicitly expected to teach patriotism, defined as “a feeling of pride in and respect for one’s country.” Pennsylvania teachers must educate sixth graders on “the proper use, display and respect for the United States flag” and “the significance of patriotic activities.” Pennsylvania’s teachers are responsible for helping high school students “evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various systems of government” including “autocracy” and “democracy.”

“Citizenship is the common thread that connects all Americans. We are a nation bound not by race or religion, but by the shared values of freedom, liberty, and equality,” according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Who is best positioned to teach these ideals in K-12 public school classrooms? To be sure, some non-citizens could teach these ideals effectively, but they cannot do so from the perspective of an American citizen.

At an American Academy of Arts and Sciences event last year that “emphasized civics literacy as a national security imperative,” former Secretary of Defense James Mattis stressed that a “foundational requirement for a sustainable foreign policy is a degree of harmony at home on what we stand for, and just as importantly, what we will not stand for,” adding, “it has to start with civic literacy.”

What America teaches in classrooms today will help determine whether the next generation is willing to defend the nation tomorrow.

So, rather than adjusting its standards, America needs to take an honest look at the reasons for its teacher shortage and consider how to address it. If it’s true that teachers are “the backbone of democracy,” then perhaps American teachers should be compensated and respected in ways commensurate with their critical role. That would help ameliorate the teacher shortage and make a global search to fill classroom vacancies less necessary.

Antonette Bowman is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. For more analysis from Antonette, please subscribe HERE. Follow FDD on X @FDD. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.