Gloria
"A strong civics education creates leaders for tomorrow who believe in what makes us special and different."
“My parents immigrated from Italy to Canada in the late 1960s, looking for a better life.”
“My dad was a bricklayer. It was post-World War II northern Italy so there weren’t a lot of job opportunities. Canada needed bricklayers at the time so, shortly after they got married, he and my mother moved to Canada with nothing. They didn’t even speak English, but they found a way – with hard work and saving their pennies – to live a lovely life and retire. They were even able to send my sisters and I to university. I immigrated to America as an adult.”
“I’ve found, coming to the United States, that there’s so much more opportunity here to get ahead than there is anywhere else, even in Canada. Take our relatives in Italy, you just can’t get ahead there. Whatever station in life you’re born into, you’re stuck there.”
“My family’s history is a story of each generation getting ahead through education and hard work. So I’ve got a different perspective on America. The United States is truly the best place to work hard and study and get ahead. You can’t do that in any other place on planet Earth like you can in the United States.”
“But instead of being taught about what makes us unique and special, kids are often being taught about how America is different, but in a spin that is negative instead of positive.”
“My husband and I have two children, boys in fourth and first grade. We tried the local public school in our community for kindergarten, first, and second grade for our older son. There were some things there that kind of turned us off, some of which had to do with civics.”
“What our kids are being taught in [school] are things that might be outright untrue or have a spin. There’s not enough focus on learning about what makes this country different and unique from the rest of the Western world. Kids aren’t being taught how our Constitution and our system of government are so different, and how it creates so much more opportunity for everybody here than in other places in the world.”
“I think that a strong civics education creates leaders for tomorrow who believe in what makes us special and different, and why we need to keep it that way, as opposed to becoming more and more like the rest of the world.”
“For our kids, my husband and I feel very confident in the education they’re going to get and the strong foundations they’re going to have, but I do worry that it’s [becoming] harder to save money to buy a home and save money for retirement and do all the things that my husband and I were able to do. That’s what I worry about for future generations, America is going to become a place where you can’t get ahead.”
“But in this country, the beautiful thing is, you can come from any background and, if you commit to working hard at school and working hard in your job, you can get ahead and the next generation can get ahead. I worry that that’s slipping away.”
Gloria
Houston, Texas
