Last year the Colorado Legislature passed a law that the American Flag
must be exhibited in every classroom.
"Fossilized iconography" is very important to some groups in this state
- but it is difficult to unpack, I think, since the construction so
often occurs within an institutionally mediated learning situation.
(Part of what I'm beginning to understand about Hiroaki's explanation of
the institutional mediated mind.)
I'm startled about the inclusion of the pledge within the second grade,
since by judicial precident, no child can be forced to recite the
pledge. Yet there is no apparent effort to enform the children of their
rights.
I also associate such curriculum mandates as something closer to old
Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. What does it mean that
these mind-sets are so strong in a 'democracy'?
Phillip White
pwhite who-is-at carbon.cudenver.colorado.edu