Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was President Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee in 2017, has been an exemplary champion of individual rights and adherence to the Constitution.

But he has long worried that public support for those concepts is being undermined by the collapse of civic education in America. We do an especially horrible job teaching children the principles of the Founding Fathers and the structure of a free society.

A recent Cato Institute poll found that 65% of 18-to-29 year olds didn’t know why the American colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Maybe that explains why 53 percent of Gen Z respondents also support writing a new U.S. Constitution. It’s easy to want to scrap something when you don’t even know what value there is in it.

So Gorsuch has written a new children’s book called The Heroes of 1776. It takes readers on a journey through the harrowing stories of the Founding Fathers and the lesser-known patriots of the Revolutionary War.

Recently, Gorsuch was asked about a quote from his book that reads: “The Constitution established the first modern republic in which people rule themselves …” He explained that the United States was founded on “three ‘radical’ ideas: that we’re all created equal, that we have unalienable rights that come to us from God [and] not from government, and that we the people have a right to rule ourselves.”

But Gorsuch worries that too many today take those ideas for granted. He notes that “Thomas Jefferson said an ignorant people will never remain free for long, and he’s right. We need to know our history in order to preserve it.”

“If you ask me what the greatest danger America faces today, it’s itself,” he continued. “We have to learn how to talk to one another. We need to know our shared history, and I think if we do that, we’ll come to realize that all the things that separate us pale in comparison to the things that unite us.”

Gorsuch’s works make clear the urgent need for school choice programs that might help restore a sense of American exceptionalism has never been greater.