Pedagogy, Patriotism, and Democracy: On the educational meanings of 11 September 2001

Abstract

In this article, I examine the social and pedagogic context of the 11 September tragedy. Although a good deal has been written about the national and international politics of 11 September, I focus on the most local of levels: the complicated ways in which 9/11 was experienced phenomenologically by teachers such as myself, and on the little known effects it had on pedagogy and on the urge to have schools participate in a complicated set of patriotic discourses and practices that swept over the United States in the wake of the disaster. Given this focus, parts of my analysis are personal, while others parts are more institutional and ideological. I describe one instance in which the 'compulsory patriotism' that arose in schools after 9/11 had damaging effects. The discussion demonstrates that no analysis of the effects of 9/11 on schools can go on without an understanding of the ways in which the global is dynamically linked to the local. Such an analysis must more fully understand the larger ideological work and history of the neoliberal and neoconservative project and its effects on the discourses that circulate and become common sense in society. And no analysis can afford to ignore the contradictory needs and contradictions that this project has created.