YU News
Those who cannot remember the past ...
By
Sep 3, 2009, 16:44

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

Students and teachers at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School are determined not to make that mistake. Sandra Stotsky of The Lowell Sun reports:

…American history isn’t being lost at a remarkable school in Malden — Mystic Valley Regional Charter School.

Its mission statement reads, “Central to Mystic Valley’s academic environment is the incorporation of selected core virtues and the fundamental ideals of our American Culture, which are embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.” I found that statement recently when preparing to deliver the school’s commencement address.

Mystic Valley ranked 93rd on Newsweek’s new list of America’s top public high schools. Although less than 3 percent of the commonwealth’s public-school students attend charter schools, the three Massachusetts schools that made the top 100 were all charters, ranking ahead of Weston High School (191st) and even Boston Latin (165th).

Embedded in the choice that members of Mystic Valley’s student body make to enroll is an education that underlies the unique view of citizenship that informed our founding as an independent nation — something the school has emphasized in its mission.

Our country depends on an intellectual commitment from citizens to engender loyalty to its bedrock principles and institutions. American citizenship is not based on gender, age, a common religion or kinship ties, or on a common linguistic, ethnic or racial background. It is instead based on understanding and valuing the basic political principles on which this republic was founded — among them an unswerving belief in the primacy of individual rights and responsibilities, the rule of law, promotion of the common good and popular sovereignty.

To develop this intellectual commitment, Mystic Valley has made sure its students acquire a deep understanding of the documents that reflect or directly express these basic political principles. In essence, they acquire a common body of knowledge…Read History lessons help to create educated and dedicated citizens, on The Lowell Sun