{"id":16932,"date":"2022-04-08T07:32:19","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T05:32:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=16932"},"modified":"2022-04-08T07:48:33","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T05:48:33","slug":"educational-gag-orders-seek-to-enforce-compulsory-patriotism%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%b8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=16932","title":{"rendered":"Educational Gag Orders Seek to Enforce Compulsory Patriotism🇺🇸"},"content":{"rendered":"

PEN America<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One theme that runs through virtually every educational gag order is patriotism. On its own, that\u2019s unremarkable. Every state in the country has education-related laws on the books designed to produce patriotic, civic-minded students.<\/p>\n

But what legislators are doing now is different. Instead of simply requiring students to learn about, say, the Mayflower Compact or the importance of democracy, lawmakers are attempting to censor what they consider to be \u201canti-American\u201d ideas, regulate instruction on slavery and racism, and prohibit conversations about contemporary injustice.<\/p>\n

In other words, the purpose of these bills is not simply to cultivate patriotism. Rather, it is to make patriotism\u2013or more specifically, a knee jerk and uncritical form of patriotism\u2013compulsory.<\/p>\n

There is a long history of such legally mandated patriotism in the United States<\/span>. The\u00a0Sedition Act of 1918<\/a>\u00a0was used to imprison antiwar protestors during World War I<\/span>. Until the 1940s,\u00a0laws<\/a>\u00a0required students and teachers to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. During the Cold War, teachers were compelled by law to swear\u00a0loyalty oaths<\/a>\u00a0to the country. This all testifies to a strain of American censoriousness centered on patriotic sentiment, one that in recent decades schools had successfully kept at bay.<\/p>\n

No longer. The current wave of educational gag orders has renewed this threat to America\u2019s educational institutions.<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

Instead of targeting specific historical topics for censorship, they propose simply to ban criticism of the United States.<\/p>\n

For example, Kentucky\u00a0HB 706<\/a>\u00a0would prohibit any \u201crevisionist history of America\u2019s founding.\u201d So does Kentucky\u00a0HB 487<\/a>, which also bans use of any material deemed to \u201cdisparage the fundamental American value of equality.\u201d Iowa\u00a0SB 2043<\/a>\u00a0bars K-12<\/span> teachers from discussing the Pledge of<\/span> Allegiance \u201cin any manner\u201d that one might reasonably understand to constitute \u201cunpatriotic commentary on the United States<\/span>.\u201d And under Oklahoma\u00a0SB 588<\/a>, public school teachers would be unable to endorse, favor or promote socialism, communism, Marxism, or any form of \u201canti-American bias.\u201d What constitutes \u201canti-American<\/span> bias\u201d? The bill does not specify, but violations are punishable by the loss of state financial support, state accreditation, or both. Another Oklahoma bill,\u00a0SB 614<\/a>, would extend that last set of prohibitions to public universities, too.<\/p>\n

Indeed, many of these compulsory patriotism bills apply to higher education, including Kentucky\u00a0HB 487<\/a><\/span>\u00a0and Missouri HB 2129<\/a><\/span> and SB 645<\/a><\/span>. These last two would require high school and university-level courses on American history to \u201cpromote an overall positive\u2026understanding of the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9\u00a0\u03a9<\/p>\n

The history of compulsory patriotism in the United States is not an attractive one. Most Americans look back on the Sedition Act, the Red Scare, the\u00a0Smith Act<\/a>, and McCarthyism as stains on the American character, not as something to emulate today. Unfortunately, in a misguided attempt to regulate what teachers can and cannot say about this country, state legislators now appear intent on repeating their predecessors\u2019 mistakes. In doing so, supporters of these bills are in fact proposing a vision of patriotism that is not only unquestioning, but fragile. Each month, as more educational gag orders become law, we come closer to replicating the anti-democratic<\/span> mistakes of our past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PEN America: One theme that runs through virtually every educational gag order is patriotism. On its own, that\u2019s unremarkable. Every state in the country has education-related laws on the books designed to produce patriotic, civic-minded students. But what legislators are … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}