When other countries do it, it's called "brainwashing" or "indoctrination." When we do it, it's called "teaching patriotism."
But from the bleachers into the echoing gymnasium, the words belted out in unison and with the nervous deliberation of 6-year-olds were "God bless America." "This land is your land." "We're glad we live in the U.S.A."At Greenbriar East Elementary School in Fairfax County, first-graders are taught to read and write and to love their country. And some students -- especially those who sing, but can't really claim the United States as the "land where my fathers died" -- learn another, subtler lesson: It's all right to love their parents' country, too.
Yesterday, the school staged its annual Patriotic Salute as part of efforts to teach a rapidly diversifying student population what it means to be American. Not coincidentally, the assembly was instituted after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when first-grade teacher Deborah A. DeMarco decided to duplicate a program she had organized at another school during the Persian Gulf War.
...But first-graders aren't much given to debating the topic. As they were taught in countless rehearsals, the 100 students marched into Greenbriar's gymnasium and sang "America the Beautiful" and "Yankee Doodle." They danced to "God Bless the U.S.A." in memory of former president Ronald Reagan. Most students stepped forward to recite facts about the nation's founding, its flag and freedoms.
"Our country is known for its strength and compassion," first-grader Shabnam Said, who wore an ornate pink tunic over pink pants from Afghanistan, said to applause.
What compassion? The compassion of taking pictures of our prisoners while we torture them? The compassion we have from dropping bombs and food packages the same color on the Afghani people? The compassion of rounding up Muslims in this country and subjecting them to interrogation because of their religion?
It burns me to know that we are replacing civics with jingoism and teaching immigrant children to pretend that the treatment that their parents and their countrymen receive at the hands of the United States is somehow moral when it is in fact not true.
I'm not anti-American - I am for the truth. The truth is that we have very high ideals as Americans but when there is conflict, too often do we fail to live up to those ideals and instead succumb to baser instincts. How can we talk about liberty, freedom, and democracy when we fail to treat others with same dignities that we expect for ourselves?
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