Mandatory patriotism is never a good idea. This sign I
passed today announces that school children in the district where I pay
property taxes to support education were not in classes learning to read, write
or think mathematically on Tuesday at 1:30pm. Instead, they were being told to
thank veterans while listening to feeble-minded platitudes such as “they gave
us our freedom.”
A poor substitute for actually studying our Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Magna Carta.
This year November 10 was the day prior to what used to be
Armistice Day, marking the ceasefire negotiated on the 11th hour of
the 11th day of the 11th month, ending European combat and,
ultimately, World War I. My father’s father was wounded on that day and it was
a long time before he made it home again, his health permanently broken. He
told his only son, “Don’t believe them when they tell you the next war is a
good one. There is no such thing.”
When I reflect on what I studied as a history major and continue
to study as a teacher of history, enforced patriotism at the taxpayers’ expense
targeting children who have not yet attained the age of reason makes me feel
like weeping. It’s nearly always practiced by aggressive, warrior nation-states
and it nearly always ends badly.
Shutting down critical thinking by silencing questioners and
dissenters by mandatory displays of chauvinism is a recipe for a dumb populace
easily enlisted as cannon fodder.
I stayed at a friend’s house last night and she told me of
her friend whose son had refused, in around 2006, to stand for the pledge of
allegiance in homeroom. He was threatened with suspension eventually and when
his mother protested she was told that the mandatory pledge of allegiance was “school
policy.” She didn’t think that school policy trumped the 1st
amendment, and she took the case all the way to the superintendent and the
school board. They agreed with her, but meanwhile the football coach had told
the boy that if he didn’t stand for the pledge he was off the team. The boy
knuckled under.
My friend said she was most appalled by the fact that no
teachers in this public high school in a university town in the western
mountains of Maine stood up for the boy’s rights. Only one teacher told the
mother that he agreed the boy had the right not to stand, but said he didn’t
dare speak openly about it for fear of losing his job. Everyone else was either
mute or vocally agreed with the mandatory pledge of allegiance. By teenagers
who had not even reached adulthood. In what sense is such a pledge even valid?
One of the arguments the boy had heard was that he was a
hypocrite because he would sing the national anthem before football games. The
student tried to argue that pledging allegiance to a nation was quite a
different matter from singing a patriot song. I give him an A+ for critical
thinking on that one.
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