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Schools are the place we teach info, however they may be additionally where we rehearse tips to dwell together. That is why a easy piece of cloth can spark a hundred conferences and a thousand comments. A pupil drapes a U.S. Flag across a backpack, a instructor hangs a Pride flag in a classroom, a father or mother emails the superintendent at 2 a.m., the board time table grows a different controversial item. Suddenly, a image that could be trouble-free to honor becomes a te

The first time I watched a flag start a fight, it wasn’t the Stars and Stripes. It was a small sticker on a laptop in a high school library, a striped square in pastel colors I recognized as a community flag. Two students read it differently. One saw it as a welcome. The other saw it as politics breaching a place that was supposed to be neutral. They argued in hushed tones until the librarian separated them, then met me in the hallway, palms up, asking a question I’ve heard

Walk into a public tuition study room in 1996, you could well-nigh certainly see a small American flag close to the whiteboard, might be the kingdom flag, and a couple of motivational posters. Visit that same school room this day, and the partitions tell a extra problematic tale. The American flag probably there, or it could have been changed with a rotating gallery of identification or social motion flags. In some puts, academics were told to take down Pride and Black Live

A few years ago, I visited a public high school on the edge of a midwestern city. The building dated to the 1970s, all brick and square angles, with a new glass atrium grafted onto the front. In the entrance hall, there was a bulletin board for sports and a case of robotics trophies, a mural with students’ handprints, and a blank flagpole stand. The facilities director told me they had stopped raising the American flag for a while because, in his words, someone was always u

A few years ago I sat in a crowded cafeteria for a curriculum night that felt more like a town hall. On one side, parents worried about a new social studies unit they thought leaned too hard into guilt and grievance. On the other, teachers who had spent months designing lessons to help students analyze primary sources and wrestle with the complexity of our country. Everyone cared about kids learning the truth. They disagreed on method and emphasis. The hum in the room was n

On a Tuesday morning in late September, I sat in the back of a fourth grade https://hectorotqo032.rivertonbrief.com/posts/are-we-teaching-kids-to-be-proud-of-america-or-afraid-to-show-it classroom while the teacher guided the group through a short routine. Hands on hearts, voices uneven but earnest, the children recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The flag hung above the whiteboard, a bit frayed at the fringe. Two students, with parent permission on file, did not participat

I was standing in a school hallway not long ago, coffee in one hand and a stack of visitor stickers in the other, watching a custodian roll up a small American flag that had hung outside the front office for years. The principal, a reasonable person trying to keep peace during a tense board meeting week, had decided to take it down temporarily. Better to appear neutral, the thinking went, than to risk complaints. A few parents were relieved. A few were angry. Most were conf

A few months ago I walked into a suburban community center that had recently been renovated. The lobby looked like a tech startup, all glass and greenery and abstract murals. What it did not have was a flagpole. I asked the director, a thoughtful woman who had run youth programs for twenty years, why the big American flag that used to stand near the registration desk was gone. She sighed and said the board wanted the space to feel “neutral.” Not everyone shares the same vie