It’s been a helluva fall. But it’s finally Thanksgiving, which means it’s time for some gratitude. Indeed, those in and around American education should be steeped in gratitude for the legacy that’s been gifted to us. Now, I know how old school that sounds—especially in an era when just a third of Gen-Z says the U.S. is a fair society and less than a third of high school seniors think their nation is the best country in the world. I mean, you needn’t look very hard to find curricular materials that depict Thanksgiving as yet one more instance of settler colonialism.

Old school or not, though, gratitude is foundational to healthy schools and civic institutions. Mike McShane and I discussed this at length earlier this year in our book, Getting Education Right. This seems like the perfect time to share a bit about our appreciation for the legacy we’ve all inherited. With your indulgence, I’m just going to go ahead and share an extended passage from the book. We wrote:

If you ever find yourself in Washington, D.C., on a crisp fall afternoon, take a walk around the National Mall. Now, it is easy to grow jaded, to see all the monuments and museums as decoration adorning the corrupt, self-dealing, and self-important “swamp.” But try to set that aside for a few hours and focus on recalling the dreams, struggles, and triumphs embodied in those edifices of marble and bronze.

On a perch above the Potomac River’s Tidal Basin sits the Jefferson Memorial, with a portico featuring Jefferson’s uncompromising proclamation, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Among the cherry blossoms and deep blue sky, we are simultaneously reminded of the grandeur of the third president and his staggering accomplishments but also his too-human frailties and hypocrisies. It was the slave-owning author of the Declaration of Independence, after all, who intoned, “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism.”

Around the river’s bend, anchoring one end of the National Mall, stands the Lincoln Memorial—a temple to the man who led our union when justice would no longer sleep. Etched into its marble walls one can find, in their entirety, two of the greatest speeches ever given on American soil: the Gettysburg Address, “That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. And that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the Earth,” and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds . . . and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Walking the path between these two icons, one encounters the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, with Lei Yixin’s towering granite statue flanked by a majestic river vista and a massive granite wall studded with King’s timeless prose. It is easy to pause and get lost in the words. The eye cannot help but catch the steadfast pledge from his bus boycott speech: “We are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” However unsettled our times may seem, we are struck by King’s admonition from far more troubled ones: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

What a heritage. Standing in the shadow of their legacies, one’s heart quickens with thankfulness that we are the ones fortunate enough to inherit the nation they helped to build. One is reminded of the debt we owe to these men and the countless thousands honored by memorials to the veterans of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam who gave their lives so that we might live in a more free, equal, and just world.

We are the fortunate heirs of an extraordinary legacy, one produced by centuries of flawed Americans grappling with the privileges and burdens of citizenship. Our forbearers sold slaves and abolished slavery, they defeated the Nazis and imprisoned Japanese Americans in internment camps. Our nation has weathered virulent anti-Catholic sentiment, the reign of Jim Crow, the rise and fall of the KKK, the Great Depression, the Soviet menace, the schisms of the Vietnam War, urban riots, and the assassination and impeachment of presidents. We’ve survived all of it, learned and grown, and turned to confront new challenges. Ours is a tale of sacrifice, reflection, courage, deliberation, patience, magnanimity, and even civil war.

We do a crude disservice to this complicated legacy when we reduce it to caricature. That was true back in the era when schools too often reduced American history to a hero’s tale of manifest destiny, Paul Bunyan, and George Washington’s refusal to tell a lie. But, with an energetic assist from Howard Zinn and his disciples, that narrative was pushed to the margins more than a generation ago. Today, I find that the one-dimensional caricature tends to lean the other way, depicting our nation as a menagerie of bad acts and bad actors.

As a long-ago social studies teacher and teacher mentor, I’ve spent more than three decades in and around teacher preparation. Over that time, it’s struck me that teachers have been taught to approach the U.S. in a manner that’s increasingly at odds with how they’re urged to teach the history and culture of every other nation. When it comes to students from Nicaragua or Nigeria, Syria or Sri Lanka, teachers are told to be mindful to respect their heritage, honor their traditions, and not belittle their country of origin. Yet, when it comes to how American teachers are advised to approach our nation’s founders, traditions, and history, the rules are very different. All too often, ed school courses, PD workshops, and popular texts seem to imagine that our republic is a sordid “slavocracy” and that pride in our shared story is evidence of ignorance. Indeed, it’s fair to say that students in American schools (public and private) are showered today with one-sided caricatures of the United States that would be deemed irresponsibly simplistic if the subject were (literally) any other nation on earth.

Now, in private settings, I find that the lion’s share of educators and policymakers—left and right—agree with pretty much all of this. They tend to agree that we’re fortunate heirs of a democratic inheritance and need to teach accordingly. They also agree, however, that we need to ensure that students learn the whole messy story and that educators must not shy away from America’s sins and stumbles. This isn’t surprising, as this both/and sentiment is where most of us happen to land. Most Americans, of all races and creeds, tend to think theirs is a good country populated by good people, and one deserving of our affection. But for various reasons, there’s been a hesitance to vocalize the “patriotic” half of this equation fully and unapologetically. It’s time for those who’ve been hesitant to say this publicly to find their voice.

Schools are the places where students learn about their role in the American saga. It’s where they learn that their generation, like each before it, is tasked with creating a more perfect union—and that they will one day take their turn as custodians of the American creed. As Lincoln put it 160-odd years ago in his first inaugural, “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” This Thanksgiving, let’s take a moment to ensure that our schools and colleges are cultivating those mystic chords of memory.

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”