Secondary Education Commons^™

A Love-Hate Relationship: Personal Narratives Of Pride And Shame As Patriotic Affects, Mark E. Helmsing

Occasional Paper Series

The Office of Alumni Relations for George Mason University—in Fairfax, Virginia, where I teach—is located centrally on the campus. The exterior of the building faces a busy walkway, displaying in vinyl lettering the official slogan of the university’s alumni association: “once a Patriot, always a Patriot.” This motto refers to the university’s Patriot mascot and implies that once a person joins the university as a student, that person becomes a Patriot and will forever remain a Patriot, which, the alumni office presumably hopes, will result in feelings of goodwill that prompt generous financial contributions from alumni donors.

In considering the …

Fostering Democratic Patriotism Through Critical Pedagogy, Hillary Parkhouse

Occasional Paper Series

When I was a high school US history teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, I sometimes wondered about the relationship between patriotism and critique of one’s nation. Specifically, I questioned just how critical students could be without becoming disaffected toward the United States. I tried to be honest with my students about the nation’s mixed record of democracy—how the country was founded on ideals of equality and yet stole land from Native Americans, kidnapped millions of Africans as part of a massive system of chattel slavery, and denied the vote to women until 1920. But I …