Tag Archives: social studies education

Social control and the pursuit of dangerous citizenship

Last month I gave the keynote address at the Ninth International Conference on Research in Teaching of Social Sciences at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Organized by GREDICS (Research Group on the Teaching of Social Sciences) this year’s conference theme was “The Formation of Social Thought and the Construction of Democracy in the Teaching of Social Science, Geography, and History.”

While in Barcelona, I also had the pleasure of participating, along with social studies researchers from Colombia, France, and Brazil, in two seminars for the students and faculty at AUB, which focused on recent topics of and methods for conducting research in social studies, geography, and history education.

My talk, titled “Social Control and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship”, can be streamed online here (translated to Catalan).

The PowerPoint presentation of my talk is available in English, Spanish, and Catalan.

The abstract of my talk follows:

Social Control and the Pursuit of Dangerous Citizenship

Yes, citizenship—above all in a society like ours, of such authoritarian and racially, sexually, and class-based discriminatory traditions—is really an invention, a political production. In this sense, one who suffers any [or all] of the discriminations…does not enjoy the full exercise of citizenship as a peaceful and recognized right. On the contrary, it is a right to be reached and whose conquest makes democracy grow substantively. Citizenship implies freedom…Citizenship is not obtained by chance: It is a construction that, never finished, demands we fight for it. It demands commitment, political clarity, coherence, decision. For this reason a democratic education cannot be realized apart from an education of and for citizenship. (Paulo Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers, p. 90)

The nature of citizenship and the meanings of citizenship education are complex, as are their multiple and contradictory implications for contemporary schooling and everyday life. The issues citizenship education presents are critical and inexorably linked to the present and future status of public schooling and the maintenance, strengthening, and expansion of individual and democratic rights.

In his classic book Democracy and Education (1916), John Dewey opens with a discussion of the way in which all societies use education as a means of social control. Dewey argues that education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind. In other words, there is no “objective” answer to questions about the means and ends of citizenship education, because those purposes are not things that can be discovered.

In Normative Discourse, Paul Taylor (1961) succinctly states a maxim that has the potential to transform our approach to the civics, citizenship education and the whole of the social studies curriculum: “We must decide what ought to be the case. We cannot discover what ought to be the case by investigating what is the case” (p. 278). We—educators and citizens—must decide what ought to be the purpose of citizenship education. That means asking what kind of society, what kind of and world we want to live in and then taking action to make it a reality. And, in particular, in what sense of democracy do we want this to be a democratic society? In order to construct meaning for civics and citizenship education, we must engage these questions not as merely abstract or rhetorical, but in relation to our lived experiences and our professional practice as educators.

Not surprisingly then civics and citizenship education—which is generally accepted as the primary purpose the social studies education—has always been a highly contested curricular area. The tapestry of topics, methods, and aims we know as social studies education has always contained threads of social reconstructionism. Social reconstructionists in the USA, such as George S. Counts, Harold Rugg, and later Theodore Brameld argued that teachers should work toward social change by teaching students to practice democratic principles, collective responsibility, and social and economic justice. Dewey advocated the democratic reconstruction of society and aspects of his philosophy inform the work of some aspects of citizenship education. The traditional patterns of social studies teaching, curriculum, and teacher education, however, reflect little of the social reconstructionist vision of the future, and current practices in these areas are more often focused on implementing standardized curriculum and responding to high-stakes tests than developing and working toward a vision of a socially just world. Indeed, the self-described social studies “contrarians” in the USA who advocate the “transmission” of “facts” and reject pluralism in favor of nationalism and monculturalism seem to be have the upper hand in most schools and classrooms, despite spirited resistance.

Undoubtedly, good intentions undergird citizenship education programs in North American. And yet, too often their oppressive possibilities overwhelm and subsume their potential for anti-oppression and anti-oppressive education, especially as states, the national government, and professional education associations continue their drive to standardize, to impose a singular theory and practice of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Social studies educators must pursue, as some already do, an agenda dedicated to the creation of a citizenship education that struggles against and disrupts inequalities and oppression. Classroom practice must work toward a citizenship education committed to exploring and affecting the contingencies of understanding and action and the possibilities of eradicating exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence in both schools and society. Freire, as illustrated in the above quotation, like Dewey, teaches us that citizenship education is essential to democratic education, and that democratic education is essential to a free and democratic society. Students must know that birth, nationality, documents, and platitudes are not enough. They must understand that the promises of citizenship (freedom), the fulfillment of its virtues, are unfinished, and that they remain an ongoing, dynamic struggle. And they must come to act in a variety of creative and ethical ways, for the expansion and realization of freedom and democracy, the root of contemporary notions of citizenship, is in their hands, and it demands of them no less than the ultimate in democratic and anti-oppressive human reflection and human activity.

Contemporary conditions demand an anti-oppressive citizenship education, one that takes seriously social and economic inequalities and oppression that result from neoliberal capitalism and that builds upon the anti-oppressive possibilities of established and officially sanctioned approaches. Some new and potentially exciting directions and alternatives exist, however, within the recent scholarship surrounding Freirean and neo-Freirean pedagogy, democratic education, and cultural studies.

The pedagogical power “dangerous citizenship”, which I explore in the balance of this paper, resides in its capacity to encourage students and educators to challenge the implications of their own education/instruction, to envision an education that is free and democratic to the core, and to interrogate and uncover their own well-intentioned complicity in the conditions within which various cultural texts and practices appear, especially to the extent that oppressive conditions create oppressive cultural practices, and vice versa.

Singer: Don’t know much about—history, geography or civics.

Don’t Know Much About – History, Geography or Civics
By Alan Singer

In April 1943, as the United States prepared to invade Nazi dominated Europe and hopefully rebuild the continent on democratic foundations, the nation was shook, at least mildly, by a study that showed a tremendous “ignorance of U.S. History” by college freshman (Benjamin Fine, “Ignorance of U.S. History Shown By College Freshman,” The New York Times, April 4, 1943, p. 1). A survey of 7,000 incoming students at 36 colleges and universities across the country exposed a “vast fund of misinformation on many basic facts.” Adding to the national concern was that most of these students had studies either American history, government, or social studies while in high school. Meanwhile, 80 percent of the colleges and universities did not require a United States history class to earn an undergraduate degree. For a week, the issue made the front page of the New York Times and was even debated in the United States Senate. Then it quietly faded from public attention, until it reappeared in 1976, 1987, and 2002 when new test scores were released (Alan Singer, “Past as Prologue, History vs. Social Studies,” Social Education, 68 (2), February 2004, pp. 158-160.).

People somehow thought that saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school and singing the National Anthem at baseball games were enough to promote patriotism and respect for democracy, that is until the next Cold War or War on Terror scare.

In recent weeks, ignorance of United States history and the functioning of the U.S. government made the front pages again when a National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics exam showed that among other academic weaknesses, “Fewer than half of American eighth graders knew the purpose of the Bill of Rights” and “only one in 10 demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances among the legislative, executive and judicial branches.” Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who heads a group that promotes civics education, declared “Today’s NAEP results confirm that we have a crisis on our hands when it comes to civics education.”

In many ways today’s crisis is of the government’s making, both on the national and state levels. It is also a crisis precipitated by the actions of both political parties, the Bush Republican “No Child Left Behind” and the Obama Democrat “Race to the Top.” Both mis-education strategies stress continuous testing in reading and math at the expense of all other subjects, including history, social studies, and civics. Students, teachers, and schools are all evaluated solely on these tests items. NO CHILD ON TOP / RACE TO THE BEHIND has transformed many of our schools, especially in inner-city communities, into cold, dry, boring test prep academies rather than places were children learn how to learn and prepare to become active citizens in a democratic society.
According to a report by my colleague Andrea Libresco, after five years of No Child Left Behind 36 percent of the nation’s school districts had cut class time for social studies to focus on math and reading test preparation.

In New York State, civics education has been undermined by the virtual abandonment of social studies below the high school level. Standardized state social studies and history assessments have already been canceled for the fifth and eighth grades and may become optional in high school. Unfortunately, as State Educational Commissioner David Steiner conceded at a conference at Hofstra University on April 15, “What is tested is taught.”

These “reforms” will make civics education, history and geography at best haphazard learning in our schools. According to Amy Gutmann, President of the University of Pennsylvania, civic education is the most important subject talk in America schools and should have “moral primacy over other purposes of public education in a democratic society.” Brian Dowd, social studies K-12 coordinator in Massapequa, NY and co-chair of the Long Island Council for the Social Studies fears that “the Board of Regents,” by counting social studies again, “is about to put New York in ‘moral danger.'” The council is now conducting a letter writing and email campaign to press the state to keep current assessments and re-institute the ones that were suspended.

In the 1980s, Ry Cooder & The Moula Banda Rhythm Aces had a less-than-hit song called “Down in Mississippi.” It celebrated a state with some of the lowest economic and social indices in the country. My fear is that current national and state educational policies that stress reading and math test prep at the expense of everything else will not only undermine civic understanding, but leave us all “Down in Mississippi.”

Another disturbing thought is that people in power in this country may not want a truly educated population. When Osama Bin Laden was killed, both President Obama and former President Bush called it an act of “justice.” I asked an eleventh grade high school class in Uniondale, New York if they agreed and every student who spoke, and there were many, said “Yes.” I then asked how we define “justice” in the United States. There was general agreement that the key component is due process of law with the right to a trial. My final question was, whether you agreed with the killing of Bin Laden or not, do you think it can correctly be described as “justice”? Students were now not so sure. For me as a social studies teacher, the most important part of civics education is promoting this kind of uncertainty.

Alan Singer, Director, Secondary Education Social Studies, Hofstra University

Texas state school board continues assualt on reason

The right-wing wing assault on reason in schools has intensified with the appointment Gail Lowe as the chair of the Texas State Board of Education. Lowe recently criticized the inclusion of US Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and legendary labor leader Cesar Chavez in the social studies curriculum because, according to Lowe, Marshall and Chavez are are “not particularly known for their citizenship.”

Governor Rick Perry appointed Lowe to the position after the Texas state senate rejected Perry’s attempt to have Don McLeroy appointed for a second term as board chairman. In his role as chair of the Texas State Board of Education, McLeroy championed creationism and lobbied to have Texas science curriculum focus on the “weaknesses” of evolutionary theory. In a January 2009 editorial, The New York Times described the McLeroy’s board as “scientifically illiterate” for their efforts to create a science curriculum that reflects conservative Christian beliefs about creation, rather than scientific evidence.

Under Lowe, the Texas Board is not likely change its tune. According to the Houston Chronicle, Lowe, a small town newspaper publisher, is “unapologetic about her conservative Christian views.” In an interview with the Associated Press, Lowe said “This country was founded on Judeo Christian principles and to say otherwise is to deny what is very unique about our country,” and she believes that believes students should be taught “biblical motives of the country’s founding fathers.”

Lowe has been a member of the Texas board since 2002 and has consistently voted with the panel’s ultra conservative faction—opposing inclusion of contraception information in health textbooks, attacking evolutionary biology as part of the science curriculum, and rejecting the inclusion of two of the most towering civil rights figures of the 2oth century in the social studies curriculum, Marshall and Chavez .

Lowe’s comments on Marshall and Chavez were in response to comments from members of board appointed advisory-panel who have argued that Marshall—who argued the Brown v. Board racial desegregation case in the 1950s and who later became the first African American US Supreme Court Justice—and Chavez—the Mexican American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist—should be deemphasized in the social studies curriculum because they lack “the stature, impact and overall contributions of so many others.”

Marshall and Chavez are “not particularly known for their citizenship,” Lowe told the Houston Chronicle. “Figures we use to represent those character ideals (citizenship, patriotism and community involvement) and the type of persons we want your students to emulate should be politically neutral.”

Hmmm, what kind of logic is that? Well, it’s racist logic of course. Can you even find one figure in a US history textbook who is “politically neutral”? Even a white person?

Thanks to Tony’s Curricublog for the heads up on this (and many other stories).

Texas Education Board extremists target social studies

[Thanks to Tony Whitson for tipping WTBHNN on this development.]

“The Texas Freedom Network reports that fringe right-wingers on the Texas Board of Education have turned their attention from Christianizing the science curriculum in the state and are now focused on the social studies curriculum.

A TFN press release states that the Texas State Board of Education is set to appoint a social studies curriculum “expert” panel that includes absurdly unqualified ideologues who
are hostile to public education and argue that laws and public policies should be based on their narrow interpretations of the Bible.

TFN has obtained the names of “experts” appointed by far-right state board members. Those panelists will guide the revision of social studies curriculum standards for Texas public schools. They include David Barton of the fundamentalist, Texas-based group WallBuilders, whose degree is in religious education, not the social sciences, and the Rev. Peter Marshall of Peter Marshall Ministries in Massachusetts, who suggests that California wildfires and Hurricane Katrina were divine punishments for tolerance of
homosexuality.

It gets worse.

Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, is a self-styled “historian” without any formal training in the field. He argues that separation of church and state is a “myth” and that the nation’s laws should be based on Scripture. He says, for example, that the Bible forbids taxes on income and capital gains. Yet even such groups as Texas Baptists Committed and the Baptist Joint Committee have sharply criticized Barton’s interpretations of the Constitution and history.

Barton also acknowledges having used in his publications and speeches nearly a dozen quotes he has attributed to the nation’s Founders even though he can’t identify any primary sources showing that they really said them.

Some state board members have criticized what they believe are efforts to overemphasize the contributions of minorities in the nation’s history. It is alarming, then, that in 1991 Barton spoke at events hosted by groups tied to white supremacists. He later said he hadn’t known the groups were “part of a Nazi movement.”

In addition, Barton’s WallBuilders Web site suggests as a “helpful” resource the National Association of Christian Educators/Citizens for Excellence in Education, an organization that calls public schools places of “social depravity” and “spiritual slaughter.”

And what in the world is the point of putting a right-wing evangelical minister on a social studies panel?

The Peter Marshall Ministries Web site includes Marshall’s commentaries sharply attacking Muslims, characterizing the Obama administration as “wicked,” and calling on Christian parents to reject public education for their children.

Marshall has also attacked Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. In his call for a spiritual revival in America last year, he called traditional mainline Protestantism an “institutionally fossilized, Bible-rejecting shell of Christianity.”

Says TFN’s Kathy Miller:

‘It’s absurd to suggest that Texas universities don’t have accomplished scholars in the field who are more qualified than ideologues who share a narrow political agenda. What’s next? Rush Limbaugh on the ‘expert’ panel? It’s clear now that just appointing a new chairman won’t end this board’s outrageous efforts to politicize the education of our schoolchildren. It’s time for the Legislature to make sweeping changes to the board and its control over what our kids learn in public schools.”

With Don McLeroy’s confirmation hanging in the balance in the Senate and lawmakers considering 15 bills that would strip the state board of its authority, these board members continue trying to push extremist politics into Texas classrooms. It’s as if they’re daring the Legislature to call them on it.'”

Call for manuscripts: Canadian Social Studies

Canadian Social Studies
Open Call for Submissions

Canadian Social Studies, since its inception, has both drawn from and pointed to the multiple historical, sociological, geographical, and philosophical/theoretical/political perspectives that constitute the field of social studies education. Focusing on education’s role in helping to foster a better future, the journal publishes original, peer reviewed conceptual and empirical studies. Its purpose is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and research findings that will further the understanding and development of social studies education. CSS is especially interested in contributions that make strong connections between theory and practice. To this end, and recognizing the many sites in which social studies is practiced, we have several sections for potential contributions:

Articles
Book reviews and review articles
Loose threads: uncommon expressions of thoughtful exploration: art here in all its forms (with artist statements where desired). Recognizing the diverse ways issues affecting social studies (e.g., environment, poverty) can be represented, for this section, editors invite non-textual products from artists, teachers, and students.

Authors should send electronic copies of their submissions to any one of the following co-editors:

Carla Peck: carla.peck@ualberta.ca
George Richardson: george.richardson@ualberta.ca
Kent den Heyer: kdenheye@ualberta.ca

All submissions should be accompanied by a statement that the submission has not been sent to another publication nor previously published.

Style Manual – Canadian Social Studies uses APA 5th (2001) Edition

Length of Articles – Articles should be up to 6000 words inclusive of the abstract and documentation. Shorter pieces are also welcomed.

Copyright Clearance – Authors are responsible for obtaining written copyright permission for the use of pictures, tables, maps, diagrams, etc., and longer quotations appearing in their submissions. Any copyright permission must accompany the submission.

The political compass and the vanishing political spectrum

The “political spectrum” is a long time topic in high school social studies classes and the parlance of “left-wing/right-wing” is firmly embedded in the minds of most North Americans. However, the left-right dichotomy that is typically used to categorize political views in the media and elsewhere does more obfuscate than illuminate differences in political thought.

In the USA the political spectrum has shrunk to the point that there is effectively no difference between Democrats and Republicans on economics, while there are a few, but only a few, notable differences on social issues. So if you watch Fox News, CNN, etc. you’ll see teleprompter reading pundits making mountains of mole hills when it comes to who’s on the left and who’s on the right—Alan Colms on the left? (At least we don’t have to endure Hannity and Colms any more on FoxNews, although Colms continues to pose on Fox radio).

The terms “Right-wing” and “Left-wing” as applied to politics originated with the French government assemblies in the 18th Century, where the aristocrats sat to the right of the speaker and commoners (the bourgeoisie) to the left.

The oversimplication of political thought to a single scale of left/right is what allows some Americans to actually call Obama a socialist. These folks are sincere in their beliefs about Obama, but the ancient Greeks would have called them called idiots (ἰδιώτης or idiōtēs)—seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters.

Typically jejune public (and pundit) opinions about what constitutes the left and the right makes it difficult for folks to make sense of political positions that fall out of the narrow mainstream—Noam Chomsky and Ron Paul are examples of well known political figures who cannot be accurately characterized on the left/right political binary.

What’s at issue here is not just the accuracy with which we categorize political figures or political views. The left/right binary has the practical effect of forcing political discourse into artificial categories—every political disagreement becomes a two-sided argument, which is the typical cable news or local newspaper paradigm for political news coverage. This strategy works quite well in capitalist democracies, which cultivate the appearance of dissent, choice, and difference on political and social issues, while manufacturing consent amongst the public for policies designed to preserve the interests economic and political elites. The economic bailouts of recent months are a good example of this.

But the left/right binary also alienates, marginalizes, and confuses many people who fail to see a place for their own political views in the “objective” framework of what consitutes politics, so they do not participate (and I’m not talking about voting or elections, but the failure to image themselves as having political agency in the broadest sense of the concept).

Despite a wide variety of models that can provide multidimensional images of political positions, discourse about the political spectrum in the media and many classrooms remains shallow and unidimensional.

While models (and quizzes) like The Political Spectrum, Pournelle Chart, the Nolan Chart, etc. have their limitations, they can be useful pedagogical tools for teachers who want to encourage their students to think about politics beyond the oversimplified right/left divisions that dominate mainstream media (and this provides students with a good starting point for thinking critically about the MSM and the interests they serve).

US Patriotism as Viewed from a (Short) Distance

Last November in Houston, TX, I participated in symposium titled “The Future of Patriotism”, which was cosponsored by the College and University Faculty Assembly and the International Assembly of the National Council for the Social Studies.

The session included a wide variety of perspectives on patriotism, with talks by Suzanne A. Gulledge (U of North Carolina), Rodney Reeves (Florida State U), Masato Ogawa (Indiana U), Joel Westheimer (U of Ottawa), James Leming (Saginaw State U) and me. The discussion that followed the panel was quite rich and illuminating. I’m pretty sure Leming’s provocative comments were generating the most light, as well as a bit of heat (which is good).

My comments on the panel follow.

US Patriotism as Viewed from a (Short) Distance
E. Wayne Ross

“Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” —Guy Debord [“For a Revolutionary Judgement of Art”]

For the last five years I’ve lived in Vancouver, British Columbia. I don’t have any intention of moving back to the United States, but even though my spouse and son have always been Canadian citizens (my son is a dual citizen), I have yet to apply for permanent residency. I’m up there working away thanks to NAFTA, an example of free trade in human capital.

When I’m asked about my status in Canada it is always by Americans. Canadians never inquire about such things. “Have you become a Canadian citizen yet?” my compatriots ask. And my answer is usually along the lines of “I’m already a citizen of one country and I’m not so sure about how that’s working out, so why would I want to join up with another one?”

Indeed, the worst thing about living in Canada, besides the wild fluctuations in the Loonie, is that I ordinarily have to endure two national anthems at Vancouver Canuck hockey games.

“Are you proud to be an American?” I’d have to respond to that question pretty much the same way the late, great social critic and comedian Bill Hicks did: “Uh, I don’t know, I didn’t have a lot to do with it. My parents fucked there, that’s about all.” Okay, that’s a vulgar and flip response, but it does make point that being a patriot is, for most people, an allegiance based upon an accident of birth.

Patriotism can be parsed in different ways, but in the US it basically comes down to love of country and often a willingness to sacrifice for it. Ritualized performances—such as pledging allegiance to the US flag, singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” voting in elections, jingoistic holidays, buying Chevrolet Trucks, symbols like the yellow ribbon and linguistic tropes like “Support Our Troops,”—are aimed at promoting “love of country.” Indeed, American patriotism results from a hegemonic branding campaign aimed creating a population who see their interests as one and the same as the state. And I’m reminded of this every time I watch the overwrought patriotic displays presented prior to every NASCAR race (and I watch these races weekly as I am from Charlotte, North Carolina).

When asked, “do you love your country?” The first response needs to be another question: “What do you mean by country?” Here I’ll cast my lot with the Noam Chomsky who in response to this question said:

“Now if you mean by ‘the country’ the government, I don’t think you can be proud of it. And I don’t think you could ever be proud of it. You couldn’t be proud of any government. It’s not our government…States are violent institutions. States are violent to the extent that they are powerful, that’s roughly accurate.” [1]

Marx and Engles were also deeply critical of the state describing it as “nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another—no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.”[2] In the US, government policies that are driven by the interests of the capitalist class have created staggering levels of inequality in education, the economy, health care, and pursuit of justice.[3] Recent events have clearly illustrated the stranglehold Wall Street has on the federal government, and this most certainly did not change on November 4. Indeed, the US government is for all intents and purposes an “executive committee of the rich.”[4]

Alternatives to Patriotism American-style—Examples from North of the Border
Patriotism can be conceived as simply a commitment to a community—as opposed to one’s narrow individual interests, which opens the door for us to express affinity with communities other than country/government/state. George Orwell limits his definition of patriotism to acts that are defensive. Patriotism, he wrote is “…devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.”

I believe Orwell’s definition works in reference to Canada. Canadians generally have much greater faith in government than Americans. The Canadian state is much kinder and gentler than the American state. But it has engaged in its share violent acts as part of the British Empire and in its own name. Racist, discriminatory laws targeted Chinese and South Asian immigrants; the indigenous peoples of Canada have been subjected to literal and cultural genocide; and there is the current war in Afghanistan to name a few examples. But patriotism in Canada is not the issue that it is in the US. What is at issue north of the border is the question of what it means to be Canadian. What it means to be American is not a question that is often considered because the dominant strain of “American patriotism” fixes that idea.

Yes, Canadians are proud of the symbols such as the Maple Leaf (and/or the Fleur de Lis). And Remembrance Day is still, more than anything else, a commemoration of the Armistice. While America patriotism is prepackaged and given the hard sell, Canadians seem to always be engaging the question of what it means to be Canadian.

Here are some examples.

Canadian identity is closely tied to the state institutions such as official bilingualism, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act (1985) and the Canada Health Act.

Canadians jealously guard their health care system and are proud of its basis in a utilitarian ethic where the metric of the system’s success its contribution to the care of all persons. Initiatives aimed at enhancing private health insurance and for-profit health care delivery systems are considered by many as “un-Canadian.” In health care debates, the conflict between corporate profits and the literal well-being of the populous is clearly established. Indeed, Tommy Douglas—who as Premier of Saskatchewan (1944-1961) led the first socialist government in North America and introduced universal public healthcare to Canada—was voted “The Greatest Canadian” of all time in a nationally televised contest organized by the CBC.[5]

A second example is Canadian Multiculturalism Act, which recognizes and promotes the understanding that multiculturalism is a fundamental characteristic of the Canadian identity and that it provides an invaluable resource in the shaping of what Canada is and will be. Canadian multiculturalism is most certainly contested terrain, but that is the point. The cultural pluralism of Canada is not merely about allowing groups to maintain their cultural identities within a dominant culture. But, the cultural diversity itself defines, in part, what it means to be Canadian.

And thirdly there is phenomenon in Canadian politics that is completely unfathomable in the US context: Bloc Québécois. The BQ is a left-wing, ideologically driven, regionally based political party whose primary aim in the creation of a sovereign nation of Quebec. The party is, of course, orientated towards Quebec and it’s not surprising that there is little or no support for the party outside the province. While its impossible to imagine a party with these characteristics having legitimacy on the national scene in the US, the Bloc Québécois was Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in the Canadian Parliament from 1993-1997.

I believe these are examples of what Joel Westheimer has called democratic patriotism and they contrast sharply with the shallow and authoritarian patriotisms that fix what it means to be an American and define absolutely what it means to be “A Patriotic American.”[6]

While folks like Westheimer and others are making valiant efforts to reclaim American patriotism as democratic. I don’t believe that patriotism is a salvageable concept, particularly in the US context. The mainstream of American patriotism today—the product of that hegemonic branding campaign aimed creating a population who see their interests as one and the same as the state—is a betrayal of the revolutionary ideals that birthed United States: the emancipation of the common person; the creation of participatory democracy; a voluntary federation of local communal institutions, perpetually re-created from below.[7] I think Guy Debord’s thoughts on revolution are relevant here:

“Revolution is not ‘showing’ life to people, but making them live. A revolutionary organization must always remember that its objective is not getting its adherents to listen to convincing talks by expert leaders, but getting them to speak for themselves, in order to achieve, or at least strive toward, an equal degree of participation.” [8]

Promoting a commitment to a community—as opposed to one’s narrow individual interests—is crucial project, but I believe that the nature of that community and the actions taken to express one’s commitment to a community are choices that individuals must make for themselves with no expectation that an accident of birth defines what your community or commitments are.

Notes
[1] Chomksy, N. (1992). Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media [DVD].

[2] Engles, F. (1891). Postscript to Karl Marx, The Civil War in France.

[3] Ross, E. W. (2006). Introduction: Racism and antiracism in schools. In E. W. Ross (Ed.), Race, Ethnicity, and Education (Volume 4, pp. xiii-xxvi). Westport, CT: Praeger.

[4] Gibson, R. (2005). The search for what should be, within what is, by critical educators. Journal of Critical Educational Policy Studies, 3(1).

[5] http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/

[6] Westheimer, J. (Ed.) (2007). Pledging allegiance: The politics of patriotism in American schools. New York: Teachers College Press.

[7] Lynd, S. (1968). Intellectual origins of American radicalism. New York: Pantheon.

[8] Debord, G. (1981). For a revolutionary judgement of art. In K. Knabb (Ed.), The situationist anthology (pp. 310-314). Berkeley, CA: Bureau of Public Secrets.