Patriotism and Education: An Introduction

Abstract

A CARTOON published in New Yorker in October 2001 shows a couple in a New York apartment entertaining friends. As hosts clutch each other's hands, woman confesses their guests, We're still getting used feeling patriotic. Another New Yorker cartoon shows a policeman walking away from a car. Inside, reading newly issued ticket, driver asks his passenger incredulously, Flagless in a patriotic zone? In a third cartoon, an elegantly dressed woman hands a pile of expensive dresses, a fur coat, and her credit card a sales clerk and says, This isn't for me--it's for economy. New Yorker cartoons are hardly a barometer of national sentiment about patriotism following 9/11, but magazine has a distribution of over 800,000--a large percentage of which are subscriptions in city where Twin Towers fell--and its authors, cartoonists, and even advertisers reflected a melange of conflicted feelings about loyalty, solidarity, and right dissent in a Editor David Remnick was initially criticized for censoring authors and capitulating pressure from Bush Administration lend support military operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but magazine also was where Susan Sontag furiously observed that the unanimity of sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy. Perhaps contributor who most plainly captured confusion of months come was cartoonist Victoria Roberts, who drew a middle-aged husband and wife sitting down dinner. Both look slightly perplexed as husband says simply, Who ever thought patriotism could be so complicated? The complexity of patriotism is further reflected in great many ways it has been represented by politicians, media, authors, critics, and religious leaders. Each has shaped various ideas about patriotism and its importance national unity and sought advance particular notions of patriotism over others. Nowhere are debates around these various visions of patriotic attachment more pointed, more protracted, and more consequential than in our nation's schools. As several authors in this special section make clear, patriotism is highly contested territory. The articles here explore relationship between patriotism and education. Pedro Noguera and Robby Cohen ask readers think about what educators' responsibilities are in wartime. Digging deep into nation's past, they present provocative historical examples that do not lend themselves facile analysis or pat good-guy/bad-guy stories. They ask whether, in an era of educational accountability, we are not ignoring our responsibility students present clear and accurate information on varying viewpoints about on terrorism. Given that our nation is at war in at least two countries, they ask, shouldn't educators be accountable for ensuring that all students have some understanding of why we are fighting, of whom we are at war with, and of what is at stake? Diane Ravitch challenges us think about what schools actually do encourage students' appreciation of U.S. culture. She points out that educators stand strong in their belief that children's self-esteem is linked knowledge and appreciation of their ancestral culture but not that of United States, where they live and will one day vote and raise children. How strange, Ravitch muses, to teach a student born in this country be proud of his parents' or grandparents' land of birth but not of his or her own. Or teach a student whose family fled this country from a tyrannical regime or from dire poverty identify with that nation rather than with one that gave family refuge. Critical of jingoistic conceptions of patriotism, Ravitch nonetheless calls for attention traditional respect for and celebration of nation's heritage and democratic principles and ideals. …