Our own children—not just immigrants—need a patriotic education which today is denied them by an entrenched education bureaucracy. We cannot win this fight within the education establishment; we need to break out of the establishment so that we can bring pride and patriotism back to our schools.

The very concept of America is under assault. The traditional notion of our country as a union of one people, American peoples, has been assaulted with multicultural, situation ethics, and values neutral model where Western values and American civilization are ignored, minimized or ridiculed. Unless we act to change things, our next generation will grow up with no understanding of core American values. This will destroy America, as we know it, as surely as if a foreign conqueror had overwhelmed us.

It is absolutely necessary to establish a firm foundation of patriotic education upon which further knowledge can be built; otherwise, Americans will lack understanding of American values and how important and great it is to be American. Thomas Jefferson wrote that the chief value of studying the past is “rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty…. [h]istory by apprising them of the past will enable them to [be a] judge of the future.”

It is a sad fact that American students are entering and even graduating college without a proficient understanding of U.S. history. For example, a 2003 survey of seniors of the top 50 colleges and universities conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni found that more than half of the participants did not know George Washington was the commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and accepted Brig. Gen. George Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown (32% said Washington, 36% thought it was Ulysses S. Grant, 6% said it was Douglas MacArthur). Historian and Pulitzer price winning author David McCullough draws the logical conclusion to this state of affairs: “If you don’t know what Yorktown was all about, and that Washington was the commander, you don’t know…a lot about American history that you ought to know.”

We must adjust the lens through which we view our nation’s priorities, focusing especially on education. Patriotic education, like a vastly improved math and science education, is a key step we must take to win the future. The House and Senate education committees (as well as the education committees of each state legislature) should establish standing subcommittees on patriotic education that define standards by which patriotic education should be taught. We need new curricula and textbooks that accurately tell the story of how people of all backgrounds struggled to make this country great to be used in schools. The Library of Congress should provide a resource system for American history so as to universally provide access to a world-class information system.

We will work to re-establish patriotic education in the classrooms to reinforce American values in our children. Schools should be required to teach American history; state universities should demand an understanding of American history before students can earn their degrees.

We must challenge the entrenched education bureaucracy that seeks to rewrite and secularize American history.

We must challenge teachers and professors who are radically anti-American.

We must review school textbooks to ensure that students are being taught factually and not through some radical reinterpretation or bias that distorts America and defames our society.

We must rebuild the cultural bond of historic memory that has made America the most exceptional nation in history.

But in all of this, we must not be naïve. Insisting that public schools actually teach American history and American values will provoke a bitter fight with the left, no matter how popular those values are with the American people.

If we lose this struggle in the classrooms we will lose the America that was proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and defined in our Constitution.

If we do not teach America’s patriotic history to our children then how are they going to learn it? We must make sure that our young people understand America and what it means to be an American. This is a unique country, the Founders were unique people, and the Constitution is a remarkable document. We live in a very magical place called America and we need to reassert this truth again and again.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is Chairman of the Gingrich Group.