What is America? July 03 2024
It is quite a moment in American history, isn’t it? The grand experiment of Democracy is being tested again!
Waldorf Publications recommends two books on America: The first is a collection of essays, The Riddle of America. John Wulsin, the editor of this remarkable book, was a longtime teacher of literature and drama at the Green Meadow Waldorf High School in New York. The second, Stories from the American Journey by Karl Frederickson (an equally longtime history teacher at Green Meadow and colleague to John Wulsin), is a collection of stories Frederickson has shared with this students over his many decades teaching.
Both books offer insights into what has made the United States of America—America—and how we got to where we are today. As a living entity, a country has a life and a guiding spirit that informs and leads the culture of that country. The unique quality of American government and culture, the first of its kind on the earth, acknowledging no emperor, pharaoh, king, or pope—and no other ideology except the understanding that all people are created equal and that human beings should have a say about whom they wish to be governed by and by what ideals they wish to be governed — as radical now as it was in its inception.
Informed by governance structures of Native American culture, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), and conceived in an ideal of liberty, the United States of America stands as the most open and inclusive description of a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The shadows of this remarkable approach to government are very dark, of course, with the stamp of slavery and genocide of Native Americans writ large across its history and the continuing horrors of prejudice and penal manipulation
This summer, read these two books to find new ways to consider the grand history and glorious geography of this vast nation, how the two influence each other, and what the future might hold. Your consciousness can contribute to a bright future for America. Your interest, imagination, and study can help ensure that this great nation “shall not perish from the earth.”
Seventh through tenth grade teachers will find these to be exceptionally helpful books, but everyone can take part in positive visioning for the future!