Keeping patriotism alive as Stanislaus-area scholarship contest fades away
I’m afraid it’s true. The American Heritage Scholarship Series is no more.
If you know exactly what I’m talking about, good for you — it means you’ve been paying attention, perhaps for as long as two decades, to the unique way high school students around Modesto and Stanislaus County have expressed patriotism. You’ll keep reading because you’re saddened to learn of the demise of this once-great program.
If “American Heritage” only faintly rings a bell, or if you have no idea what it was — well, that’s a symptom of the problem. Waning interest, after 20 years, put the last nail in its coffin.
The American Heritage Scholarship Series, in simple terms, was a local essay contest. High school juniors and seniors each fall researched and wrote about a constitutional question in hopes of winning up to $2,000 in prize money for college.
The contest was born in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when patriotic zeal was at its peak. Three sponsors — the Stanislaus County Office of Education, Modesto City Schools and The Modesto Bee — gathered donations from generous local businesses and people, talked local judges into judging the final rounds and put out the word for students to sharpen their pencils, so to speak.
Rolling out the program in its inaugural year, 2002, a Bee reporter wrote that then-MCS Superintendent James Enochs, who died two years ago, said terrorism convinced school officials that they must spend more time on civics, because too many people had been taking their freedoms for granted. “If we really understood what we have in this country, we wouldn’t have to wait until someone punches us in the face to have our patriotism surface,” he said.
Over the next two decades, a committee each year chose essay prompts, or questions with constitutional implications. They ranged from the death penalty and recreational marijuana to students expressing themselves online and women’s right to vote. One year, the prompt asked whether political parties help or hinder the democratic process. Imagine that.
Hundreds of adults throughout the region dedicated untold hours to this effort, whether public figures addressing kickoff audiences or volunteers judging essays in early rounds. As good as the experience was for students, “it’s probably even better for the adults involved to get a glimpse of how the next generation is developing,” my predecessor, Mike Dunbar, wrote in 2015.
Former SCOE Assistant Superintendent Susan Rich shepherded the contest before retiring a couple of years ago. Modesto attorney William Broderick-Villa also put his heart and soul into it, using legal connections to secure top-flight presenters. As The Bee’s opinions editor, I served on the committee the last 3 1/2 years and attest that it really was a labor of love.
Students earned real money
And it paid real dividends. In its 20-year life, the contest drew essays — many sparkling — from 3,785 college-bound students. Of those, 360 won a total of $182,800 in scholarships.
But money isn’t everything, and we struggled to attract entries. In 2010, 300 students submitted essays; by 2015, participation had dropped to 200, and by 2020, to only 73.
“Twenty years is a long run,” Jason Maggard, SCOE administrative services chief of staff, said when the painful decision was made to pull the plug.
It’s unrealistic to expect kids born after the 9/11 attacks to have the exact same patriotic fervor. But that doesn’t mean they have none.
Parents and educators, keep teaching our kids what it means to be American. They don’t have to enter or win contests to love their country, its ideals and its promise.
Tell them why you love America. Show them. Help them love it, too.
Let freedom ring.
This story was originally published August 26, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
