The Greek philosopher Diogenes said, “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” This is why the cultural debates about civic education in our schools are inherently political. Their content and method have significant ramifications for the health of our republic now and in the future.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of a Supreme Court case that wrestled with these matters in a serious way. West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) overturned Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), a decision made by the court only three years prior. Both cases concerned whether public schools could require students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance on pain of discipline up to and including expulsion. In both cases, Jehovah’s Witnesses objected on religious grounds to their children reciting the pledge. The court in Gobitis decided the government could make such a requirement. Barnette concluded the opposite.

The court’s swift switch was justified but imperfect. And in it, we find three distinct approaches to civic education worth considering.

Barnette pointed to a legitimate problem with the pledge requirement. The Jehovah’s Witnesses believed such reverence for the flag violated the biblical commandment against worshipping an image. In requiring reciting the pledge, the government forced persons to express a belief against their will. Conservatives today seek free speech protections for religious persons whom the government wishes to force to bake cakes and take photographs. Were Gobitis still the reining precedent, conservatives might have found that their arguments against forced speech hold less sway.

This would create a host of problems within our society because required speech by the government undermines an essential purpose of the First Amendment. We protect speech first and foremost as a means to express ideas peacefully and to try and persuade others to agree with those positions. Doing so is grounded in our most fundamental principles of self-government, which is itself based on the commitment that all men are created equal and thus must consent to our principles and procedures. The forcing of speech is a limitation of liberty, one that suppresses dissent and pushes us toward even more despotic limitations of individual rights.

However, the court in Barnette went too far in its reasoning. Beyond arguing against coercion of belief and speech, the justices asserted that public education must be “faithful to the ideal of secular instruction and political neutrality.” But such neutrality was not only unnecessary to support the court’s decision. It also created an impossible standard detrimental to legitimate and essential goals for civic education.

First, the perfect neutrality argument was unnecessary. There is a difference between a curriculum and a teacher positing a perspective on American ideals and history and a school forcing students to express a particular position in relation to those matters. One can have the former while still leaving students to say or not say what they wish. Second, perfect neutrality is impossible in these matters. How one selects texts and presents them always will presuppose some commitments, some perspective. There are better and worse, more and less responsible ways to so do. But those are matters of judgment and degree rather than hard-line separation.

Third, complete neutrality undermines legitimate and essential purposes in our education system. The court in Gobitis had emphasized the need for education to cultivate principles and habits in children that prepared them for their duties as citizens. It argued, “The ultimate foundation of a free society is the binding tie of cohesive sentiment.” We need this cohesion in a free society to maintain peace and good order. But we also need it, too, to maintain adherence to our principles of liberty and equality. These principles are not transmitted by osmosis. They must be taught and defended. Without inculcating the truths found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our project of self-government cannot last.

Thus, the best education for our republic rests between coercion of belief and perfect neutrality. We must honestly teach our history — not only its triumphs but also its tragedies. Still, we can and should defend the fundamental principles that make us a great nation. That’s the kind of education fit for a free people and needed, as our Constitution’s preamble says, “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.