Zombie Nation
How American Children are Indoctrinated in Patriotism
“Would American kids stand up if you teach them America did terrible things in Vietnam?” — Japanese assemblyman
In 2004, Toru Kondo, an English teacher at a Tokyo-area high school, was relieved of duty after a 32-year career in which he never so much as received a reprimand from the administration. His crime: refusing to stand and sing the national anthem at school ceremonies. The Board of Education had recently made these actions compulsory, hoping to instill a sense of national pride that had been all but eradicated from Japan since the U.S. occupation after World War II. Instead, these actions managed to spark a nationwide debate over the line between patriotism and indoctrination, with the left-leaning teacher’s union and western-educated emperor on one side and the right-wing government on the other. The teacher’s union, valuing historical accuracy over any sentimental patriotism that censorship might foster, insisted that “patriotic feelings cannot grow by force.” The government, conversely, feared that schools focusing too heavily on teaching students about Japan’s misdeeds both as a colonial power and as an aggressor in the Second World War would stunt in the students the feelings of nationality necessary for a nation-state to function. As a comparison, one Japanese assemblyman asked, “Would American kids stand up if you teach them America did terrible things in Vietnam?”
A half a world away and a century before, a version of this very question was being asked. The United States of America, since the ending of the Civil War in 1865, had witnessed increased efforts to indoctrinate its own citizens with similar feelings of nationalism. Some thought that the war was a result of Americans in the south learning to identify with their state community instead of fostering loyalty to the idea of the nation, a more common occurrence in the north. As was written in one Chicago-are newspaper in 1894,
The Southern boy had been taught to venerate supremely the flag of his state, and when the times came he fought for it. The Northern boy had been taught to worship the flag of his Nation, and when the time came he fought for it.
Southern sectional primacy was viewed as one of the root causes of the splitting of the Union. Therefore, it was argued that by promoting the northern ideals of national patriotism throughout the entire country, not only would good citizens be created, but the nation would be prevented from fracturing again. The thinking was that patriotism, a love for one’s country, would lead to the development of nationalism, a sense of unity with those who share that same love at the expense of those that do not. Thankfully for those that believed in the proliferation of said nationalism, the American schooling system already existed as a system of institutions set up to instruct Americans during the period in their life during which they are most malleable.
This article will use a combination of newspaper articles and classroom textbooks to examine how routines established in schools were created and used to implant in impressionable children the sentimental patriotism that precedes practical patriotism upon which nations rely to survive. The timeframe will start with the flagging movement of the 1890s and go into the first decades of the twentieth century. From the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction came a wave of nationalism that eventually put flags on every schoolhouse and a pledge of allegiance on every child’s lips, and turned history books into toothless fables worthy of Aesop himself. From the viewpoint of the twenty-first century, none of these efforts to shroud the children of the nation in stars and stripes sound as if they would inspire much contention, but as this paper intends to show, the battle to routinize and ritualize patriotism was quite divisive.
I. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
This idea of constructing good citizens through schools was not new. In fact, it was as old as the nation itself. Men who witnessed and influenced the very construction of the country’s foundations, such as Benjamin Rush and Noah Webster, argued that schools should be used as “republican seminaries” for the nation that would “render the mass of people more homogeneous and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government,” where forming docile citizens actually superseded any educational duty a school might have. Webster argued that “the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head,” and though neither men saw this idea put into action, it was influential enough to impact schooling decades later. With the rise of public education in the mid-nineteenth century, “it became clear to many observers that mass education might be a powerful force in determining what kind of nationalism predominated. Industrialization weakened ties within extended families, and schools, in turn, became critical institutions for transmitting both useful knowledge and social values across generations.” By extension, it follows that those who have power or influence over schools have the ability to control the dissemination of knowledge, and thus the development of sentimental patriotism in the citizenry.
This control manifested itself in the form of textbooks, and which events were or were not included in them. The authors and publishers of these books played an outsized role in how students learned to view their country. Joseph Morneau’s Schoolbook Nation catalogs the evolution of the textbook industry and the different special interest groups that helped steer it, and how that in turn affected popular understandings of history in the United States. Morneau writes that
The ‘truths’ of history proved remarkably malleable when subjected to a process that was nominally controlled by educational experts but in practice remarkably responsive to well-organized lobbyists.
The very biased versions of history learned in school are one of the most prominent building blocks upon which national pride is constructed on a country-wide level. Having a uniform mythology learned across a country is an important step in the construction of national identity, and alterations to these histories throughout the existence of the United States have changed perceptions of how the country came to be as it is. This more often than not means making history less controversial, censoring anything that might suggest the United States to be anything other than the greatest country in the history of the world. Ultimately, it makes the red, white, and blue Kool-Aid go down easier. As Morneau argues, “A bit of historical amnesia can make it easier for people to imagine themselves as a single body,” knowing that the rest of the country knows and believes the same things that they do. This quote also alludes to the idea of the ‘imagined community’ described below. But it is not just knowing the same history as everyone else that is important. In fact, being unaware of certain parts of history that would threaten perceptions of a nation is just as important. Morneau quotes French scholar Ernest Renan on this matter, saying “Forgetting, I would go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.”
That print would be used as tools of nationalism is not a groundbreaking assertion. Benedict Anderson, a titan in the field of nationalism studies, put forward the theory of print capitalism in his book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, stating ultimately that this was a necessary step in the formation of national identity. Printed literature promotes a common language and body of knowledge that binds people together in what are called nations. Anderson’s thesis is that nations are ‘imagined political communities.’ This means that “even members of the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” And this ‘image of communion’ is rooted in the same print capitalism and the shared knowledge. Print capitalism effectively promotes national identity because of things like newspapers, which come out day by day, absolutely predictable, with more news, more information about where we live and how we live. We have all intense awareness that there are millions of other people reading the same newspaper at exactly the same time, we have no idea who there are but we are quite sure that they exist and that in some way through reading a common newspaper we belong together.
Forgetting, I would go so far as to say historical error, is a crucial factor in the creation of a nation.- Ernest Renan
What is being explained here is the building of a common level of cultural literacy through print in an imagined national community. By reading the same interpretations of the same events every day, the public will develop similar understandings of the world. The same mechanisms hold true for schoolbooks. By teaching history in the same way at the same time to rooms full of children, the children begin to form their own similar understandings of the United States and its place in the world. They want to be part of the United States, or at the very least believe themselves to be part of it. This belief itself is vital, as it is the only thing that brings this invisible idea of a nation into the real world. Hugh Seton-Watson agrees in Nations and States, saying that “All that I can find to say is that a nation exists when a significant number of people in a community consider themselves to form a nation, or behave as if they formed one.” When seen in this light, the importance of national identity is clear. If nations are socially constructed, national identity is the only thing that holds these self-selecting groups of people together. If no one wanted to be a citizen of the United States, the “nation” would effectively cease to exist.
Ernest Gellner complimented the work of Anderson with his own, Nations and Nationalism. In the book, Gellner argues that nations are neither permanent nor natural, only coming into being with the transition to industrialization; but it is the appearance of naturalness that gives nationalism its power. If nations are viewed as having histories that stretch back to ancient times, “as if these alleged entities are supposed to just be there, like Mount Everest, since long ago, antedating the age of nationalism,” they can shield themselves from questioning by deferring to said history. Physical manifestations of this around the world include both creation of the Scottish kilt and the increased pageantry of English coronations. While both are relatively modern inventions, they have been passed off as if they had been part of a national story since the dawn of time, linking the modern nation with its glorious past. In some cases, ancient epic poems extolling the virtues of the nation would be ‘discovered’, further adding to the national canon.
Gellner builds on Anderson’s work by illustrating the real-world impact of nationalistic behavior by comparing two hypothetical maps, “one drawn up before the age of nationalism, and the other after the principle of nationalism had done much of its work.” The former, he says, will resemble a painting by Kokoschka, with blurry lines as one country bleeds into the next, no specific starting and ending point between them. The latter, he wrote, would look more like the work of Modigliani. Its lines would be sharp, with no doubt about the dimensions and exact borders of each nation. The nationalist movement, he says, instills in the citizenry a uniform level of cultural literacy (similar to Anderson’s assertions about print capitalism), unlocking huge economies of scale that push the concept of division of labor to unprecedented levels and necessitate levels of communication and literacy between ever-increasing groups of people that only come from modern nation-states.
The Invention of Tradition, a collection by historians Hobsbawm and Ranger, illustrates how tradition draws upon this same popular understanding of history, incorporating it into everyday life through a process of ritualization and repetition. The objectives of tradition are often nationalistic in nature, and they often manifest themselves in the form of patriotic symbolism. They illustrate the extent to which these have pervaded everyday life by listing “the national anthem, the national flag, or the personification of ‘the nation’ in symbol or image” all as modern products of nationalist movements and institutions. It is when nationalist sentiment is translated into concrete visuals like this that it can be best controlled. Flags and other patriotic visual cues can be placed inconspicuously throughout the nation, reinforcing nationalistic identities in the citizenry without them ever realizing or thinking about it as such. This can be witnessed even in today’s current events, with the report Tackling Paid Patriotism recently published by Senators Flake and McCain, detailing how the United States government spends millions of dollars annually to stage patriotic events such as flyovers, flag ceremonies, and “thank yous” to the troops at various sporting events. Sports and patriotism have been aligned since at least the early twentieth century, when the national anthem was first played at a World Series game to drum up attendance. By aligning patriotic sentiment with athletics in this fashion, sporting events have influenced people to subconsciously draw connections between the two, meaning that whenever sports are brought up, American identity will be reinforced.
Historian Catherine Palmer explains that this reinforcement of national identity does not just occur in sports, but there exist many “diverse ways in which identity can be constructed, maintained and communicated at the level of the ordinary, the everyday.” Nationalist identity manifests itself in things as everyday as the food we eat or the landscapes we view. Palmer notes that the idea of a link between geography and a certain type of cuisine did not appear until the invention of nation-states, which coincided with the proliferation of printed recipe books (an example of print capitalism). As a result, “culturally defined food choices and patterns of eating eventually came to be seen as characteristic of a people and a country” . The most obvious examples of food choice becoming emblematic of a people would be Jewish or Muslim religious dietary laws, but less obvious examples such as the cutting and eating of wedding cake in Western culture abound, and work similarly to reinforce a sense of identity and community. Even Thanksgiving, at its core, is a federal holiday constructed around food that reinforces the ideals of both community and Americanness.
The idea of a land itself being representative of the nation, according to Palmer, developed in the sixteenth century, the time when maps and atlases began to be widely printed and distributed. People started to visualize the land and the people that lived on it beyond what they themselves physically saw as being part of a national community. This belief is revealed in the wording of many national anthems, which across the world highlight geographic distinguishers such as the woods of Denmark, the valleys of Ireland, or the coasts of Portugal, to name a few examples. Both “America the Beautiful” and “God Bless America,” though not official anthems, still act as vehicles for connecting nationalistic sentiment to the landscape of “Purple mountain majesties/ above the fruited plains.” Highlighting the physical landscape as being congruent with nationality “enables individuals to visualize themselves as part of a limited community with defined territorial boundaries that separate it from other nations and from other cultures.” This concept of borders is important in that communities, even imagined ones, inherently exclude some, and geographic boundaries allow a simple, if unfair, way for deciding who is and is not a part of the community. Though in practice political borders prove to be fairly permeable to cultural diffusion, often causing tension for those that live near said borders, the belief that they are not allows geography to act as a proxy for nationalism.
Palmer’s work comes as a further expansion of what Michael Billig wrote in Banal Nationalism, where he was the first to suggest that it was everyday occurrences that really cemented national identity. He believed that “in established nations, there is a continual ‘flagging,’ or reminding, of nationhood.” Everyday occurrences and routine, without drawing attention to themselves, positively inform opinions and beliefs about the nation. As Billig repeatedly emphasizes, it is not the annual sighting of the billowing flag on the parade route that has as much impact as the limp flag outside the post office that is seen every day. In a fashion similar to subliminal advertisement, the repeated exposure to these imperceptible symbols acts to reinforce Americanness and belief in the imagined community of the United States. Examples abound, from politicians’ repeated use of ‘we, us, our,’ to how newspapers differently frame stories about news home and abroad, including what they expect their readers to know, to how the news stations report the weather. But there is one instance of banal nationalism that has not received attention from Billig, Palmer, or anyone else: how school routines have functioned in society in the same way, delivering messages made to instill a sense of national identity.
II. HOW TEXTBOOKS FRAME HISTORY
Renan’s above suggestion that forgetting was a useful tool in nation-building was not just a glib turn-of-phrase, but in fact mirrored a measurable change in how the story of the United States was taught. Specifically, the decades before and after the year 1900 were notable for their spinning and censoring of facts to mitigate any past wrongdoings while simultaneously canonizing all those that played (what was viewed as) a positive part in the country’s childhood and adolescence as well as asserting the superiority of the United States as a whole. This section of the paper examines eight different historical retellings from various commonly-used school texts from that time to show how the story of America as a whole was reframed. First, regarding the first interactions of white men with Native Americans, texts began to move away from talking about the latter’s culture and society to highlight how warlike and “uncivilized” they were. One textbook, published in 1899, wrote of Native Americans that, “There were three principal divisions among them: (1) savage, (2) barbarous, and (3) half-civilized.” Another, thirteen years later, wrote that “The history of Indian relations in colonial times is one of continual strife. This was inevitable in the contact between a superior and inferior race.” This phrasing frames the interaction in a way that not only alleviates European settlers from responsibility for the atrocities done to the Native Americans but goes so far as to insinuate that they were ‘inevitable,’ a bold assertion even by today’s standards of insensitivity towards Native Americans. By educating children that even the very first white people to arrive on (what is now) U.S. soil were superior to those dissimilar to them, the educational system informs students’ worldview in a way that ensures their belief in the infallibility of America.
Another factor playing into the positive portrayal of many of the early settlers of the land were their Protestant roots. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Protestantism and Americanism were so intertwined as to be synonymous, and that relationship was reflected in the schoolbooks just as deeply as they were in the rest of American culture, often at the expense of Catholicism and other religions. Morneau discusses this, writing, “For significant numbers of non-Catholics throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the church and its schools seemed implacably opposed to national values and true American patriotism.” One early example of the glorification of American Protestantism was a retelling of the Salem Witch Trials in a 1912 history text, an event that one would assume to be a black mark upon Protestant, and thus American, history in the colonies. But the text’s author wrote that,
The comparative brevity and mildness of this outburst of religious fanaticism testifies to the real saneness of the Puritan mind. Nowhere in the world at this time was life more pure or thought more elevated.
Not even the murder of fellow Protestants for allegedly practicing magic in backwoods Massachusetts could be allowed to be framed in such a way as to allow students to question the infallibility of the generations of great Americans that preceded them.
The historiography of the Boston Massacre is another interesting case. Throughout the nineteenth century, textbooks often framed the mob as instigators of the violence that day, where the “British troops” were “insulted and pelted by a mob having clubs, snow balls, stones, etc. The soldiers were dared to fire.” But after the Civil War, the event was viewed through the same patriotic lens as today, wherein “the king’s soldiers were sent to keep them in subjugation,” after which “Eleven of the Sons of New England lay stretched upon the street. Some, sorely wounded, were struggling to rise again.”
Despite recounting the same event, the young reader of the latter history could not help but come away in awe of the bravery of his revolutionary forefathers fighting the injustice of foreign rule. Not only does this begin to establish the trend of the United States trying to establish itself as the moral standard bearer in all armed conflicts it takes part in, but the identifying of British military men in relation to a form of government as opposed to a specific nation is significant as well. Where formerly they were described as “British troops,” they morphed into “king’s soldiers.” This shows the revolutionary fight not just as a war against Britain, but against the oppression of a monarchical government of which these soldiers were agents. It also shows early signs of the disdain the United States held for any country that had different ideas about how to govern. This proved to be a behavioral pattern that, throughout the ensuing twentieth century, would have devastating consequences from South America to the Far East, as the United States fought a worldwide Cold War against the spread of differing forms of government.
Even America’s greatest sin, slavery, receives the patriotic treatment in school history. One 1900 textbook, in three sentences, turns chattel slavery into something forced by England upon the United States against its will, on equal footing with the Stamp Tax. The book said that
Not long after the introduction of slavery into the colonies, the traffic in slaves became quite profitable, and was chiefly carried on by English traders. England was responsible, above all other countries, for slavery in the United States. At different times the colonies attempted to suppress the slave-trade, but the British government thwarted them at every turn simply because it was a profitable means of commerce.
Reading this, American school children were allowed to go to bed each night confident that slavery was more of a footnote in the American pageant as opposed to the bedrock upon which the country was built, that the capture, torture, and forced labor of millions of human beings was nothing more than an accident of history, the heritage of being a colony to that nefarious empire across the ocean.
“England was responsible, above all other countries, for slavery in the United States” — early 20th century school textbook
Social movements, just like historical people and events, were also framed in a way that threw out objectivity to support nationalist interests at the time. Early twentieth century textbooks were filled with anti-foreigner propaganda. One, talking about the waves of immigrant workers that had been entering the country recently, lamented the influx of Chinese laborers that were taking jobs from whites, saying that “Their presence, too, threatened to create another race problem, which might some day rival in difficulty the Negro or the Indian problem.” Another, talking about the sinking of the USS Maine in Cuba, was quick to assign blame despite inconclusive evidence, writing without qualification that “there was a widespread feeling in the United States that the Spanish government was responsible.” (Note: Spain here was neither a Protestant nation nor a republic.)
The sinking of the Maine was something of a flashpoint in the development of American nationalism. Cuba had been fighting for independence from Spanish rule since the 1860’s. It was a struggle that many Americans identified with and supported, with some influence from the yellow journalism of Hearst or Pulitzer. With public pressure mounting, President McKinley sent the Maine to dock in Havana Harbor in 1898 to allegedly protect American interests, where it met its fiery end. The loss of this ship ended up being the tipping point that started the Spanish-American War, a quick and wildly popular one for the United States. There existed no evidence that Spain had anything to do with the sinking. The Naval report on the incident said that, “The court has been unable to obtain evidence fixing the responsibility for the destruction of the Maine upon any person or persons,” and subsequent investigations instead point the finger at a probable coal fire that ignited some munitions. But that had not stopped American newspapers or textbooks from drawing their own conclusions, all of which worked to unite Americans against the foreigner.
For as widely felt an impact that the Spanish-American War had on national identity, it was The United States’ occupation of the Philippines that may be the most egregious rewriting of history. The Philippine-American War and ensuing occupation was One of the longest conflicts in U.S. history. It resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, and these decades of violence and mass murders were more often than not simply ignored in school books. One early twentieth century author instead decides to highlight the United States’ occupation by writing that “schools were encouraged, local governments were established, and the Filipinos were given a large share of self-government.” There is not even any space allowed for students to take note of the irony of the role reversal that it had become the United States that was a world power maintaining sovereignty over foreign lands through force. All in all, passages like these frame the United States as a civilizing power in relation to foreign countries, ensuring support for American intervention abroad. Simultaneously, students were taught to fear those that appear different, or un-American, which had real-world consequences manifested in the form of violence against immigrants in cities throughout the country.
III. “A FLAG OVER EVERY SCHOOLHOUSE”
In addition to the material that was taught, the environment that surrounded schoolchildren worked similarly to reinforce ideas of national identity. Ceremonies and routine marked each school day, ensuring that the greatness of their country was never far from the children’s minds. In 1892, Francis Bellamy, Chairman of the National Education Association, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance, which by later that year would make its way into public schools for the first time. This was thanks to Benjamin Harrison’s Presidential Proclamation (which was actually written by Bellamy himself), which turned the national Columbus Day observance into a celebration centered on the raising and saluting of the flag.
Just as his Pledge began to gain prominence, Bellamy and his publisher, James Upham, both self-described patriots that saw it as their life’s work to instill in the youth a sense of patriotism, “fostered a plan of selling flags to schools through the children themselves at cost, which was so successful that 25,000 schools acquired flags in the first year.” Bellamy’s scheme was to have schoolchildren sell tickets to adults, after which the price of about 100 tickets could be used to buy a flag. He thought it important that the children themselves take ownership of the process of getting a flag, making them feel a stronger connection to the ideas behind the symbol, and that by needing so many adults to participate in the funding of the project would make this seem a much more community-based effort. Bellamy in his writings also highlighted the importance of the children reciting the Pledge in unity with one another. Clearly, this was all designed to create the same imagined communities that Anderson described. Schoolhouses on opposite sides of the country may have had nothing to do with each other, but believed they shared a bond as a result of the daily rituals they both fulfilled.
The work of Bellamy and Upham was an unqualified success that impacts school life even today. While many Americans could not recall the dates of the Civil War or list all of the Presidents, there is nary a person in this country that could not recite the Pledge of Allegiance, regardless of how long ago they last were in school. But even Bellamy and Upham faced opposition in their quest “to see a flag over every schoolhouse.” Their efforts inspired the Boston Globe editorial, “The Worship of a Textile Fabric,” disparaging their efforts, which Bellamy said was not an atypical response at the time. Even at the local level, many schools found that attempts to raise the flag over the schoolhouse inspired debate and sometimes threats of violence. In the early years of the movement, many newspapers reported bills being introduced and then rejected that would have made patriotism the law of the land. One Cincinnati Commercial Tribune reporter wrote how legislators called for a resolution that would put flags on each schoolhouse in fulfillment of Bellamy’s wishes, while the San Francisco Bulletin said that lawmakers in California went even further, trying to turn the first Monday of each month into a ‘flag day’, with ceremonies marked by the singing of the national anthem as well as recitations of the pledge of allegiance coinciding with the raising of the flag. In a small town outside of Pittsburgh, a school was prevented from raising the flag by a “mob of foreigners,” which in turn resulted in a call for “1000 armed men to assist in placing the American flag on the public schoolhouse.” And it was only when these men poured in from neighboring towns that the flag was raised, albeit with some grumbling from the crowd observing from a distance.
IV. DETRACTORS FROM NATIONAL IDENTITY
Actions such as those in Pittsburgh stand in contrast to traditional recountings of the time period. The country is commonly framed as a bastion of unflagging patriotism around the time of the Spanish-American War, described as “an era of unabashed flag waving, yellow journalism, and hero worship.” Research here suggests a different telling, that many diverse populations, such as immigrants, Catholics, organized laborers, and any other groups found themselves excluded from the feelings of patriotic unity. They were viewed in opposition to the white, Protestant vision of the United States. These groups stood in the way of the formation of a uniform national identity, and as a result were vilified by the rest of the country.
The behavior of naturalized and nationalized citizens of the United States towards the rest of the inhabitants of their country was, according to nationalist theory, not surprising. Modern nations usually follow one of two general models: either a more-or-less homogenous culture exists, out of which is born a concrete nation; or a political union is formed, which in turn attempts to forge a unified culture among all those within its borders. While many of the nations of Europe took the former route, the United States metastasized across North America under the conditions of the latter. In this way, its creation has been likened to building a house without walls. Though there existed a union (the roof) that covered the entire country, the means to support it (nationalism, or the walls) were not in place. In the course of building these walls of nationalism in the United States, those that neither conform to the homogenous culture nor accept the mandated white Protestant hegemony would become casualties. As Billig wrote,
A particular form of identity has to be imposed. One way of thinking of the self, of community, and indeed, of the world, has to replace other conceptions, other forms of life.
This means that religiously and ethnically particular beliefs, no matter how comforting to those now involved in their own imagined communities with people in their country of origin, needed to be sacrificed for the greater good of an American national identity. With a nation of so many micro-cultures, an overarching identity can only be formed when “a part claims to speak for the whole nation, and to represent the national essence.” There can only be one group that has final say on what is part of that overarching identity and is not. For example, during the construction of French national identity, it was the Parisians that took control of this role. Similarly, during the construction of American national identity, it was white Protestants that would be the final judges in determining what was American and what was not.
Of course, many of these ‘other’ groups did not go out of their way to blend in. Many foreigners clung to traditions and languages as links to the homeland they left behind. Billig wrote that “It is suggested that nation-states are not founded upon ‘objective’ criteria, such as languages.” He saw nation-states as something entirely socially constructed and not dependent on elements like language or religion. But if nation-states survive based off of the similarities holding their community together, it makes sense that these objective criteria, such as skin color, religion, and language, would all play a part. If language had not been such a stringent requirement of Americanization, it seems unlikely that immigrants would struggle as they did to gain acceptance. In a nation of immigrants, uniform language was a very important building block in the construction of national identity. Language could unite people that culturally shared next to nothing. Whereas people from different ethnic backgrounds may have different clothing styles, neighborhoods, dietary habits, or religious practices, they could still share language. And whereas many of these manifestations of ethnic culture were limited to home life, language was immensely present and noticeable in public, which is why it was so important to foster a uniform language.
Immigrants that held to the language of their homeland acted as disruptions to the imagined community of the United States, one of the reasons they faced such persecution. This is why the dissenters were minimized to “a mob of immigrants” in the above article, though the Pittsburgh area was rich with an amalgamation of Italian, Slavic, and Russian and German Jewish communities in the 1890s. To nativists, they were all the same; they were ‘other.’ It is also why immigrant communities like the one in Pittsburgh would have been against Bellamy’s flagging movement. The flag stood as a visible symbol of the national community, a community from which they were excluded. To put the flag on a public building where many of their own children may have been educated was an insult, a reminder that immigrants were viewed as separate, as lesser. And it was enough to inspire resistance and, in some cases, violence.
V. CONCLUSION
All in all, it was the work of men like Upham and Bellamy that brought the dreams of men like Webster and Rush to life. Their mark on the last century of schooling in America cannot be disputed, and neither can the importance of their movement in sparking a quarter century of patriotism unlike anything this country has seen before. But it must be remembered that the cost of constructing a national identity was high. This was not a nationally unifying movement, but an extremely divisive one that would play out in both small-town school houses and Supreme Court hearings over the ensuing decades. While the idea to teach patriotism in school started as a way to prevent any more division in a country not too far removed from a bloody Civil War, it ended up revealing that the fractures in the national fabric were not just those along state lines. Ethnic, political, and religious difference have always played a role in the social makeup of this country, but it was the countrywide effort to indoctrinate people with a sense of patriotism that drew attention to it.
The question may be asked, why is this work important? To teach one to love one’s country is a good thing, is it not? While the bonds of community forged through this experiment are both important and valuable, the costs must be weighed equally. Indoctrination at such a young age leaves many people with little room or desire in their later years to critically examine the actions of their own country. As Gellner wrote, “A man’s education confers his identity to him.” Historical retellings altered to promote patriotism in students are just as present today as they were a century ago. By educating men and women in the fashion they have been since the 1890’s, a culture is created where, though homogeneity has been achieved at a shocking scale despite the breadth of the United States, it has come at a price where it is taboo to question the actions of the American government, or risk being labeled unpatriotic, one of the most damning descriptors available today. This culture robs the citizenry of their agency and affords the government more latitude than it has earned. Billig wrote that, “By noticing the flaggings of nationhood, we are noticing something about ourselves. We are noticing depths and mechanisms of our identity, embedded in routines and social life.” By identifying how schools and other parts of American everyday life intentionally impact how Americans view the United States, citizens can more easily examine these banal influences and engage in dialogue around the topic without the fear of being labeled un-American.
