After seeing a couple mentions of this "dueling flags" thing in California, I've decided to offer my valuable perspective.
First, let's take a moment to contemplate the wise words of Warrior Soul frontman Kory Clarke, who bellowed, "Don't pledge allegiance to flags, I burn 'em!" Right on.
Secondly, anyone who wears American flag-themed clothing (which I thought was supposed to be disrespectful to the flag in the first place...?) makes me think of Kid Rock. Anyone who makes me think of that stupid, inbred, no-talent-having, slack-jawed yokel is automatically on my shitlist, especially when they're only wearing the aforementioned apparel to be dicks in the first place, so fuck those kids. Like I said, burn all flags. But if that sounds unreasonable to you, well, living in this country provides you Homer Simpsons with endless opportunities to grab your foam finger and try to spell U-S-A at the top of your lungs, from pro wrestling events to watching the teevee and cheering about whoever we're dropping bombs on this week. You can't really blame other nationalities for wanting in on the fun.
Anyway:
Of course, we are talking about the public school system, which is not meant to educate or even indoctrinate, so much as housebreak, to encourage mindless conformity, whether through anodyne "cultural awareness" outlets throughout the school year, or some other expression of collective solidarity on this or that meaningless issue. As long as kids come out the other end as docile employees and consumers, lifelong receivers of baldfaced lies from their superiors, everything is jake. The second they pose an inconvenient question, or show any independent thought, instead of trying to talk with them, bureaucratic feathers get ruffled, and the warden drops the hammer.
Reflexive identification with brand symbols, whether national or corporate, and the ability to quickly form granfalloons and, if necessary, resort to violence, actual or implied, to defend them, are pretty much what life in this shopping mall of a nation is all about, so I don't know what Heywood's complaining about here -- this is what passes for teaching them useful skills. The true independent thinkers have probably either dropped out or are sleeping in the back of the room with iPods in their ears.
3 comments:
So which is it? Are the school administrators being mean to students expressing their patriotism, or are they curbing obnoxious behavior of fascist brats?
I can sympathize with the school officials, myself. I have friends who work within public school systems, and as always, they're just overworked and underpaid and tired of kids and their classrooms being used as proxy wars for issues their parents are all fired up about.
I'm not a fan of the balkanization of identity politics, so while I (good-naturedly) roll my eyes at the spectacle of so many different groups needing to have a special day or week or month, I don't think there's any great harm in something like Cinco de Mayo celebrations in a state with such a large Hispanic population to begin with. And I do think it's obvious that the American-flag kids were deliberately trying to be provocative, and given how sick I am of all the jingoist hysteria over Mexicans these days, I reiterate: fuck those kids. I don't really see this as being about independent thought in any form; quite the opposite, in fact, hence my linking to that old story about the kid who called himself an independent thinker for wearing a Pepsi shirt in a Coke-themed class picture. That's so ironically appropriate on so many levels -- freedom of choice and thought is for all practical intent limited to your freedom to choose between different consumer products.
So I agree that schools are just another aspect of a broken system, one that values turning out more docile consumers and candidates for meaningless employment than sparking independent thought, but I don't blame teachers and officials for feeling like there's nothing they can do to change that.
Our military industrial complex needs well trained workers for a productive economy so we can threaten and bribe the leaders of rest of the world into making large portions of their populations our slaves. (Oh, sheet, that class just got canceled!)
But there is something we can do about it! We can tell students the truth and instill a sense of enlightened subversiveness so that they will think for themselves. At my school, students who wore the U.S. flag (none did) on Cinco de Mayo would find themselves engaged in lively debate with teachers and other students. I think that would be a better way of handling that kind of problem than the disciplinary approach, which makes them feel like martyrs instead of the douchebags they are.
Post a Comment