text: "Less than two months after the Sept. 11th attacks on America, the historian Donald Kagen gave a lecture on the importance of a patriotic education for maintaining and strengthening our country.  Earlier this month he gave an expanded version of that lecture.  In the lecture, he said that for Thomas Jefferson the most important goals of education were civic and moral.   Kagan said, ""This was not meant to be a 'value free' exercise; on the contrary, its purpose was to communicate the special virtues of republican representative democracy, the dangers that threatened it, and the responsibility of its citizens to esteem and protect it. This education was to be a common experience for all citizens, rich and poor, for every one of them had natural rights and powers, and every one had to understand and esteem the institutions, laws and traditions of his country if it was to succeed."""