Thinking through patriotism

Chau Hua: [A friend asked me] what it would mean if every single house had a flag at its window.... I think individuals need to define patriotism for themselves. Part of the problem of patriotism today is that it's not sincere. It's just being taught, but it's not being understood. I live with three girls at Tufts, and I asked them if they considered themselves patriots. And interestingly enough, the two of us that are first-generation [Americans] said yes, we do. The two that weren't said no. I questioned them as to why. And they said, well, we've taken everything for granted.

John Pierson: This is an independent school, so there aren't certain mandates. There's not a Pledge of Allegiance mandate.... There is a flag that flies in the quadrangle of the school, and it's a traditional job of the seventh-graders, who are divided into groups, and each group is responsible for raising that flag at the beginning of the school day and lowering it at the end of the school day. They are instructed in proper flag etiquette....

As far as the teaching of patriotism, I think it's similar to a discussion we've been having in the faculty about teaching ethics. We want an understanding of what an ethical life means, but woven into our dealing with various disciplines. I think some sort of mandate to teach patriotism to a greater extent would be problematic in the same way that pursuing a canned ethics curriculum would be problematic. Which would go back to my contention that I think patriotism is fundamentally a personal and individual sensibility, and I'm not sure individual sensibilities can be taught.

Carolyn Marvin: You can teach the vocabulary of national identity. And I think running even very small children through an acquaintance with national symbols, so they hear about Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July, and the flag, and the ceremony of taking the flag up and down ... is actually socializing children to an identity and a tradition that doesn't mean they won't be critical, political citizens later on.... It would be unfortunate to banish the pledge or flag that help people participate in the being of a group. I don't think it should be compulsory, but there's a place for conveying the symbols that get used in patriotic formats.

John Pierson: I agree, certainly with young children, a basic introduction is needed: Here's the flag, what does it mean, what's its history, how's it used. And for an older student to take on an open-ended essay topic - what is patriotism - I think that's a great essay topic. I would be rather curious to read that essay, because I think there would be a lot of people who haven't thought through that for themselves until now....

James Fraser: I would argue that we have done patriotism badly in two different ways. You get this pendulum between what I'd call a relatively unthinking patriotism where we salute the flag, we talk about "God Bless America," which can almost slide into "God Favors America," and you add to that, particularly with adolescents, the desire to conform, and you've got a pretty powerful brew that can be very dangerous. On the other hand, we react, and say we're not going to do that anymore, and we get this incredible individualism - which is the critique a lot of us had about America in general in the 1980s and part of the '90s.

I think what we're talking about here is a kind of a patriotism that says it's important that we're part of something larger than ourselves that we really value. You can start very young with discussions about: What is Jefferson really complaining about in the Declaration of Independence; what does it mean to have liberty and justice for all?; and as kids get older, to play that out in more detail, and to attend to the dissenters as well as the war heroes. So I'm increasingly now wanting to argue for more patriotism, but a much more thoughtful and reflective and individually challenging kind of patriotism.

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