Do they say the Pledge at the Citadel, do you suppose?
And do second graders have the experiential background to
follow Mike's exemplary critical interdisciplinary curriculum
explicating its _texte_?
When I was in the second grade we were not yet 'Under God'
and had contests who could say it the fastest. We all knew it
had something to do with the flag, and we always faced the real
flag when we said it, with hand over heart. In that time, there
was no embarrassment attached to patriotic sentiment, but in
Grade 2 I doubt that even precocious me (who could and did read
the Declaration of Independence at that age) had any real sense
of what patriotism might mean, beyond loving your country rather
in the same way you loved your mother and father, which mainly
so far as America was concerned, meant assuming it was basically
good. We were not much aware of global politics, or even of
communism, much less of Russia as an enemy, or sense that
patriotism and the Pledge pledged us for one nation and against
another. We were innocent Pledgers.
Who has tried to discover what something like the Pledge does
mean for Grade 2 students today? What are its intertexts, if
any? What it is affective or informational content? What sort
of act is it for them, and in what actional context or system
of interpersonal relationships or network of institutional
activities does it have its meanings? What is the Pledge _emically_
for their tribe?
It may be pointless for adults to argue about actions, policies,
or curricula for them if we really don't know what things mean
in their lifeworld. We are arguing about what these things mean,
or would mean, for us, and, as so often, and with all best
intentions, we are really totally ignoring them.
JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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