Walk the Path or Lose the Way

by Nicholas Efstathiou

In all our endeavors, we should strive to lead by example.

As a teacher, parent, and grandparent, I think of this daily. My words and actions must reflect what I consider to be the best of myself, for that is what I want people to take away from our interactions.

When I was a child, my father stressed the philosophy of “do as I do.” While this wasn’t always the best advice—my brother and I still have questionable skills and reactions learned in our childhood—it is advice I have tempered and try to follow.

In my history classroom, I hold students to a standard of behavior. We joke, we laugh, we get upset, but when it’s time to stop, we stop. I am the first to admit when I have taken things too far or allowed things to get out of hand. If I cannot acknowledge a mistake or a failure, how can I expect my students to do the same? Students must see mistakes acknowledged and corrected in order to instill the willingness to do the same. By my willingness to apologize or correct myself, I am leading by example.

The state of New Hampshire, where I teach, passed House Bill 157:1 in July 2023. This bill takes a significant step in leading the country in civic responsibility. House Bill 157:1 requires students graduating from a New Hampshire high school to take and pass a civics assessment—the same naturalization test required for those seeking American citizenship. The test consists of 100 questions covering topics from the founding of the country to federal holidays, from famous battles to the name of the current Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, as well as information about local representatives, the governor, and the state’s senators. It is a difficult test if you do not prepare, and if you don’t pass, you don’t graduate from high school.

Last year was the first time the test was required, and I had the unenviable task of teaching two civics classes. It was a challenge. Part of the class prepared students to take the civics assessment at the end of the year. Making civics interesting to ninth graders is akin to making a trip to the dentist for a tooth drilling—without the benefit of novocaine—something to look forward to. I would like to think I kept my students enthralled, but I don’t like to lie to anyone, least of all myself.

Studying our country’s Constitution, the influences of ancient and Enlightenment philosophers on our Founders, is best received in small doses. Unfortunately, we had 90-minute class blocks. To fill those long minutes and prepare my students for the test, we studied the questions.

Endlessly.

This meant I studied the questions as well. I had to do a deep dive into the Constitution, the Amendments, the Bill of Rights, and the basics of our country’s constitutional republic. I had to prove to my students that what we were learning was important. To do that, I needed to know the answers to the questions they might ask, and I had to be able to look at them and say, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

Why did I have to do this?

Simply put, I needed to lead the way.

I still need to lead the way, and this is what I stress to my students. We, as citizens, must lead the way. How can we, as a nation, require those who wish to be citizens to know the history and functioning of our country when so many of our own citizens do not?

We see this regularly. Social media influencers go out and ask random citizens questions about the country. They rarely find someone who can answer correctly; more often than not, these videos highlight ridiculous responses.

What is most frightening, however, is that some of our elected officials and their appointees do not understand the basic operation of our democracy. Granted, few people understand that there are a variety of democracies, so they can be forgiven for erroneous thoughts regarding government operations.

Elected officials and their staff members, however, cannot be given this grace. It is the nature of their job to know how our government functions, what can and cannot be done within the legal system. It is imperative that they understand what they are saying before they say it.

Recently, the phrase “constitutional crisis” has been thrown around by both sides of the political aisle. We have not yet reached a constitutional crisis, but using that phrase, especially to a wide audience, can lead people to believe otherwise.

Leadership is more than telling people where to go and what to do.
Leadership is stepping out in front and showing people what needs to be done.
Leadership is putting others above oneself.

As a teacher, my students look to me for guidance. It would be easy to tell them what I believe politically, what I think should be done, and who I think would be best to complete the task at hand.

But that is not my job.

When I am asked who I voted for, I reply that it doesn’t matter who, only that I did vote.

When responding to questions about current events, I am careful to couch my answers without speaking negatively about either political party. I don’t do this out of fear of repercussions from parents or guardians who might hold different political beliefs; I do it because I want my students to behave as I do in the future. I want them to vote and participate in our country’s political system. I want them to do so intelligently, making decisions on their own through careful analysis of the information available to them.

I remind my students of the responsibilities of immigrants to the United States, of the constant refrain that immigrants must “Americanize.” I remind them that a requirement to become a naturalized citizen is to pass the naturalization test.

If we expect our immigrants to be well-informed citizens, we must lead by example. Whatever we require of them, we must require of ourselves.

Part of our task is to preserve and help the country grow. To do this, we must raise educated, well-informed citizens.

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Nicholas Efstathiou is a husband, father, and grandfather, as well as a dedicated history teacher and author of Killers in Their Youth. Beyond teaching, he enjoys reading, writing, and collecting books. A veteran of the United States Army, Nicholas earned a Master’s degree in Military History from Norwich University.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.