This is the day for fevered patriotic oratory—the partisan kind
where the speaker gets little flecks of foam at the corners of his
mouth. I know that sort of thing makes you uneasy, so let me assure you
that what follows is going to be calm, dispassionate, and stunningly
non-partisan.
There are two traditions of 4th of July rhetoric in this country.
There's the yes-yes rhetoric of assent that e. e. cummings parodies:
"next to of course god america i/love you land of the pilgrims and so
forth."
And there's the yes-but rhetoric of dissent exemplified by runaway
slave Frederick Douglass in an 1852 4th of July speech in Rochester,
N.Y., when he asked his white audience, "What, to the American slave, is
your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all
other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is
the constant victim."
I'd argue that Thomas Jefferson was in the yes-but tradition back
in1776 when he asserted that whenever government gets in the way of our
inalienable rights, "it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish
it. . . ."
Which tradition we like best will probably determine which side we
take in the cultural war being fought in Lake County, Florida. You may
have read about it. A new state law requires Florida public schools to
teach the kids about other cultures. By a 3-2 majority, the Lake County
school board said their teachers must also teach that American culture
is "unquestionably superior."
The chair of the board, Pat Hart—Pat Buchanan admiringly calls her
a "self-professed patriot, Christian and Republican"—says that Lake
County kids should always be reminded that our culture is "the best of
the best."
But the teachers union says that would undermine the state law, one
of the aims of which is "to eliminate personal and national
ethnocentrism so that children understand that a specific culture is not
intrinsically superior or inferior to any other."
Buchanan calls that "egalitarian piffle."
The noise you just heard was a collective snort from
anthropologists throughout the world.
A snippy NY Times piece says that Mrs. Hart "acknowledges that she
has never set foot outside the U.S., speaks no foreign languages and has
no academic training in comparative cultures, religion, and government."
That noise you just heard was a collective snort of most of the
other Americans against whom such charges could be brought.
There. Am I being fair-minded or what? If my objectivity
credentials are all in order, let me state my own calmly considered
position.
To put it as delicately, as clinically as I can, I think the Lake
County school board, by a 3-2 margin, is a couple of alligators short of
a full swamp.
Not, I hasten to add, because I think that teaching kids
egalitarian piffle will make them much more tolerant of
diversity—except in a few anatomically odd cases. "They wear rings
there?" they'll say. "Cool!"
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The Truth, Mainly
What bothers me is the requirement that kids be taught that our
culture is "unquestionably superior." Imagine this:
After 30 minutes watching slides of people who look funny, Mr.
Jones says, "These people may look funny to us, class, but they don't
look funny to each other. And remember, our culture is unquestionably
superior to theirs. We're the best of the best and we mustn't forget
it."
That's when the class weisenheimer says in her Eddie Haskell voice,
"Gee whiz, Mr. Jones, I saw in the paper last month that a higher
percentage of people are in jail in the U.S. than in countries where
people look funny. In fact, we have a higher percentage in jail than
any other country in the world. Is that how our culture got to be the
best of the best?"
Mr. Jones gets that canny Danny Quayle look in his eyes. He knows
he's being set up. The weisenheimer's co-conspirators join the fun:
•"Golly, Mr. Jones, the Children's Defense Fund says our national
delinquency rate for car loans is only 3 percent, but our delinquency
rate for child support payments is 49 percent. What's that say about
our culture?"
•"Gosh almighty, Mr. Jones, Consumer Reports says of the 24
developed nations in the OECD, we rank 21st in infant mortality, 17th
in male life expectancy, and 16th in female life expectancy. Is that a
sign of an unquestionably superior culture?"
Mr. Jones is up against it. His students are questioning something
the school board says is unquestionable. Should he flunk them? Take
them out and shoot them? Tell the school board to take this job and
shove it?
Maybe he should write a Teacher's Declaration of Independence—and
read aloud to the board members the part about altering or abolishing
government that gets in the way of education. Then he could tell them
that the right to question any value judgment is what makes America
great and if they don't like it they can just go live in China and so
forth.
Hand me a hanky. I believe I have little flecks of foam at the
corners of my mouth.
Satterfield is a college professor and writes as a means of discovery.
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