American Creed

The American Creed is the belief that all the people in America are treated the same, and that every person has a chance to make their dreams come true in America; for example, the Declaration of Independence is an American Creed. The American creed is being able to support the next generation by making life a little bit easier. Americans usually have the same shared values like wanting education, community, and family. We can see these shared values among Condoleezza Rice, Joe Maddon, and Deidre Prevett; they all share these same values because of their family history.

In source A we can see how Rice values education, community, and family because of Condoleezza Rice’s family history. Rice was the Secretary of State during the Bush administration and became a professor of political science. Rice’s grandfather was enslaved and saved cotton to get an education. Which helped his family’s generations since after that his family was able to get a higher education. He would also help future generations outside of his family, by building schools and churches, for other kids, he would even help kids out individually getting scholarships and sending and helping them with being able to have access to higher education. All this made it easier for Rice to get a college education, and even helped others by teaching since she is a professor at Stanford. This makes her and her family a more credible source since they were all striving to make a better life for further generations.

Joe Maddon’s plan to make life better for future generations is by first building a sense of community, within the generation. For example, Maddon started a foundation in which he helps build community with children, by making them engage with each other in sports or clubs and such, no matter their ethnicity, or background. Maddon believes that with this strategy of building a community with kids, the parents of the kids will follow and they will be able to build a community. In Maddon’s hometown, there's a lot of racism, which is why he wanted to start the program called the Hazleton Integration Project so that not only the future generations build community but the past generations too. This makes life easier for future generations since there is that sense of community built within them.

Deidre Prevett's way to make a better life for future generations is by giving back to other families. Prevett is the principal of a school where most of the kids are on welfare, foster care, or parents are incarcerated. Prevett's family found oil on their land, which led them to be able to get higher education for 5 generations of their family with the money they got from the oil. She also believes that education is the key to success, and explains why “paying it forward” is important for her because of the opportunity that her family was able to have to be educated and be educators. Since she deeply believes that being educated is the key to self-improvement it explains why she is very passionate about education, and why Prevett is the principal of the school.

Condoleezza Rice, Joe Maddon, and Deidre Prevett are all helping future generations by making life a little easier by building strong community bonds, remembering their family, and educating the youth. The American creed is people like Rice, Maddon, and Prevett being able to make life easier for future generations.