Expecting small children to give a solemn vow filled with patriotic propaganda every weekday morning that they can’t even begin to know the ramifications of, OR ELSE, sounds like something you’d find in a totalitarian state.
It also sounds like something you would find in all sorts of other states that aren’t totalitarian.
Maybe, but as one small data point, I was really surprised (and creeped out) to just now infer from MaoShen’s comment and check on Wikipedia that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited at the beginning of every school day. In my country, the closest cultural equivalent is done once per year, in “Flag Day”, and I had previously assumed the American Pledge was like that, being said on July 4th or similar specially significant moments.
Maybe, but as one small data point, I was really surprised (and creeped out) to just now infer from MaoShen’s comment and check on Wikipedia that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited at the beginning of every school day.
Likewise (except now I’m only creeped out, the surprise came a long time ago).
In my country, the closest cultural equivalent is done once per year, in “Flag Day”, and I had previously assumed the American Pledge was like that, being said on July 4th or similar specially significant moments.
I don’t recall whether we have one at all. I remember we have a national anthem that we sung occasionally. Something about “wealth for toil” is involved.
Well, that’s what I thought too, but in those schools everyone is (supposed to be) a Catholic, and if not you (well, your parents) can choose a different school, whereas if I understand correctly children are asked to say the Pledge in all American schools, so (short of emigrating) you (and your parents) have no choice.
(Then again, some otherwise non-confessional schools in Italy keep a crucifix in each classroom—I think it used to be mandated by law, but it no longer is and a few years ago a Muslim sued his son’s school for that and managed to have it removed. But keeping around a sculpture that pupils might not even notice—I honestly can’t even remember which of certain classrooms in my high school had one and which hadn’t—is a lot less scary than have everyone pledge allegiance every morning, IMO.)
I actually never was asked to say the Pledge in any US school I went to, and I’ve never even seen it said. I’m pretty sure this is limited to some parts of the country and is no longer as universal as it may have been once. If someone did go to one such school, they and their parents would have the option of simply not saying the Pledge, transferring to a different school (I doubt private or religious schools say it), or homeschooling/unschooling.
As another datapoint, the pledge was announced over the loudspeaker but students weren’t required to recite it at the first high school I went to (though we were required to stand respectfully and most everybody still did the salute even if they didn’t recite), and theoretically required for any student that didn’t have a religious exemption note at the second high school I went to.
I have a funny story about the second situation, too. I’d been one of the ones who didn’t say the pledge, before I moved, and decided that I wasn’t going to change that unless they made me. The result of this was that the other students in my homeroom class stopped saying it, too—first the ones nearest me, then the ones next to them, and so on across the room. I happened to have a desk in one corner of the room, and by the end of the year a handful of the students in the other corner of the room were the only ones still saying the pledge, and they generally shouted it, raucously or sarcastically depending on their mood. (Makes a pretty interesting complement to the Asch conformity test, come to think of it.)
Are there countries generally regarded as non-totalitarian, other than the US, where people do anything like that?
It is highly likely (that there is at least one). It is a kind of insane practice but it isn’t quite that out of character for human social groups that I’d expect it to be a quirk unique to the USA.
Do all totalitarian states bother making all the children go to school and recite pledges?
Oh wait… Now that I think about it, Ireland’s Irish language policy is probably the biggest thing-like-that in the world. (Yeah, it’s saddening that people don’t know their great-grandparents’ language, but if the Irish government actually cared about preserving Irish, and not just about seeming to care about preserving Irish to an inattentive observer, they could achieve that in waaaaaaay more cost-effective ways.)
AFAIK things are slowly changing for the better, but this is my impression of how they were until recently. (People who have spent more time in Ireland than I have (EDIT: eight months) are welcome to correct me.)
1. Forcing every single school child in Ireland to study it four hours a week fourteen years (even in areas where Irish hasn’t been spoken for centuries, and in a way reminiscent of the study of dead languages and that it is nearly useless for actually having conversations with native speakers, or for remembering anything after a few years out of school) is just a huge waste of time and money, IMO. Making it optional would make much more sense, and make sure that only people actually interested will learn it.
1b. They also spend lots of money for translations of official acts hardly anyone will read. Changing the rule from “the public administration must write all documents in both languages” to (say) “the public administration can write all documents in either language, but must prepare a translation in the other language if requested with a thirty days’ notice” would save lots of money that could be spent otherwise.
2. They don’t even seriously try to assess what the situation in the Gaeltacht is actually like, which IMO is a fundamental prerequisite to fixing it. For example, the 2011 census asked the question “Can you speak Irish?” with possible answers “Yes” and “No”—cf “How well can you speak English?” with answers “Very well”, “Well”, “Not well” and “Not at all” (I’m told that this one was only added in the last census, but why didn’t they do the same with Irish?); and the question “How often do you speak Irish?” has answers “Daily, within the educational system”, “Daily, outside the educational system”, “Weekly”, “More rarely” (IIRC) and “Never”—and the first two were only split in the last census, after people realized that having an answer “Daily” would inflate the numbers because all school children would pick that. (Why didn’t they just ask “How often do you speak Irish, not counting language classes and the like?”?) And I’m not aware of any large-scale survey asking people in the Gaeltacht which language they prefer to use in which circumstances, as there have been for Welsh. (Are they scared of the answers?)
2b. They hardly do anything to make sure that children of living native speakers are comfortable with continuing speaking Irish, i.e. that they are able to cope with Irish in everyday life whenever possible and are forced to recur to English only when actually necessary. For example, they don’t even require Irish on food labels and the like. Living as a monolingual Irish speaker in present-day Ireland would be pretty much impossible, even in the Gaeltacht.
One interesting thing to note is that if you’re accustomed to pledging your allegiance to something every day as a child, while you’re still unable to enter into legal agreements and aren’t thinking about them, it may not occur to you that when you go to school on your 18th birthday, you’ve just pledged your allegiance in a way that… might be legally binding?
Regardless of what sort of government expects it’s children to pledge allegiance every day, do you agree with the practice of making people pledge allegiance?
Allegiance is kind of vague. It could be interpreted to mean doing normal responsibilities (not being a criminal, paying your taxes) or it might be interpreted to mean total obedience. I’m not sure whether to agree or disagree with the pledge. Maybe I should disagree with it on the grounds that it is too vague and therefore doesn’t protect reciters from feeling obligated to obey a tyrant, were one to end up in power.
Regardless of what sort of government expects it’s children to pledge allegiance every day, do you agree with the practice of making people pledge allegiance?
This is actually has been a problem with real-life examples. I’ve read that the oaths in NAZI Germany were specifically to Hitler himself, and that many members of the military felt bound by their oaths to obey orders, even when it was clear the orders shouldn’t be obeyed. I think the critical danger is in giving oaths to an individual (any of which have a very real chance of being corrupted by power, unless they take action to prevent it).
I see the difference that the U.S. pledge of alliegence is to the republic and it’s symbol, the flag. The saving factors to prevent abuses of power are:
The focus on alliegence to the nation as a whole, including all it’s members, it’s leaders, and it’s ideals.
The “with liberty and justice for all” line, which is the guarantee of what the State offers in return. The U.S. has to be worthy of the alliegence.
The extreme other war example is the U.S Civil War, where many military officers left the army to join the Confederacy. They formed ranks and marched right out of West Point because they opposed the U.S. leadership. And the soldiers who stayed let them go, knowing they were going to help the seceding states fight. Even if they disagreed, it was felt the honorable thing to do was to let them go.
This idea shows up specifically in our military training and culture in the definition of lawful orders. The military culture and legal rules define your duty to obey all lawful orders from your chain of command, up to the President. So that if you feel that an order is unlawful it’s actually your duty to disobey. Now, of course, that carries with it all the weight of being the first one to be the opposition, so it’s no guarantee to prevent abuses of power, but it does exist.
I gues my point is that the danger is in making oaths to a person.
I agree that it’s a form of indoctrination for children. But as long as the trade of alliegence and freedom it describes is a true and real one, I think it’s a good thing to keep those principles in their minds.
Ooh, I like these points, Troshen. You might be right that there’s enough “security” built into the pledge. Now you’ve got me questioning whether it might actually protect us.
If nothing else, it would make tyrannical pledges look bad by comparison, perhaps blocking them.
One interesting thing to note is that if you’re accustomed to pledging your allegiance to something every day as a child, while you’re still unable to enter into legal agreements and aren’t thinking about them, it may not occur to you that when you go to school on your 18th birthday, you’ve just pledged your allegiance in a way that… might be legally binding?
I suppose it could, yet countries don’t require you to do anything to place you in such legal binds. They have laws about “treason” that they can apply when people from their population don’t act out allegiance, whether they have pledged it or not.
Sure but the people have to enforce those laws (the government is something like 3% of the population from what I understand, which means that the people could overwhelm them easily), so if the concept of allegiance is foreign to them, as opposed to being very familiar and feeling like an obligation, or if they haven’t witnessed all the OTHER citizens pledging allegiance, it might feel like an empty word they can safely ignore.
Fair enough. A more accurate statement would be:
“Expecting small children...of, OR ELSE, is a mind-control tactic that I feel is wrong to use on children without the capacity to counter it, which I would expect to find in blatantly controlling nations, and not in a supposedly free nation.”
It does flow well, in as much as the first thing (ridiculous pledge obligation) is already opposed by most of the audience and so they can be expected to applaud when the enemy is associated with the hated thing. Unfortunately it is a crude harnessing of a fallacy.
It also sounds like something you would find in all sorts of other states that aren’t totalitarian.
Maybe, but as one small data point, I was really surprised (and creeped out) to just now infer from MaoShen’s comment and check on Wikipedia that the Pledge of Allegiance is recited at the beginning of every school day. In my country, the closest cultural equivalent is done once per year, in “Flag Day”, and I had previously assumed the American Pledge was like that, being said on July 4th or similar specially significant moments.
[Googles for it and reads it] Whaaaaaat??? O.o
Yep. I’m American. My school did it.
Mine, too, though I’d say it worked backwards in my case—I’m very cynical about formal group-bonding.
For what it’s worth, I only remember doing so until fourth grade, or about nine years of age. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
I now regret using it as an example, though. Evidently I grossly underestimated its potential sensitivity, and I really should have known better.
Likewise (except now I’m only creeped out, the surprise came a long time ago).
I don’t recall whether we have one at all. I remember we have a national anthem that we sung occasionally. Something about “wealth for toil” is involved.
For what it’s worth, I’ve never seen it said in any of the US schools I’ve attended. It’s not universal.
Are there countries generally regarded as non-totalitarian, other than the US, where people do anything like that?
If “anything like that” includes reciting prayers, practically all catholic private schools in Europe will count.
Well, that’s what I thought too, but in those schools everyone is (supposed to be) a Catholic, and if not you (well, your parents) can choose a different school, whereas if I understand correctly children are asked to say the Pledge in all American schools, so (short of emigrating) you (and your parents) have no choice.
(Then again, some otherwise non-confessional schools in Italy keep a crucifix in each classroom—I think it used to be mandated by law, but it no longer is and a few years ago a Muslim sued his son’s school for that and managed to have it removed. But keeping around a sculpture that pupils might not even notice—I honestly can’t even remember which of certain classrooms in my high school had one and which hadn’t—is a lot less scary than have everyone pledge allegiance every morning, IMO.)
I actually never was asked to say the Pledge in any US school I went to, and I’ve never even seen it said. I’m pretty sure this is limited to some parts of the country and is no longer as universal as it may have been once. If someone did go to one such school, they and their parents would have the option of simply not saying the Pledge, transferring to a different school (I doubt private or religious schools say it), or homeschooling/unschooling.
As another datapoint, the pledge was announced over the loudspeaker but students weren’t required to recite it at the first high school I went to (though we were required to stand respectfully and most everybody still did the salute even if they didn’t recite), and theoretically required for any student that didn’t have a religious exemption note at the second high school I went to.
I have a funny story about the second situation, too. I’d been one of the ones who didn’t say the pledge, before I moved, and decided that I wasn’t going to change that unless they made me. The result of this was that the other students in my homeroom class stopped saying it, too—first the ones nearest me, then the ones next to them, and so on across the room. I happened to have a desk in one corner of the room, and by the end of the year a handful of the students in the other corner of the room were the only ones still saying the pledge, and they generally shouted it, raucously or sarcastically depending on their mood. (Makes a pretty interesting complement to the Asch conformity test, come to think of it.)
Yes, FWIW catholic schools in the US do that too.
It is highly likely (that there is at least one). It is a kind of insane practice but it isn’t quite that out of character for human social groups that I’d expect it to be a quirk unique to the USA.
Do all totalitarian states bother making all the children go to school and recite pledges?
Oh wait… Now that I think about it, Ireland’s Irish language policy is probably the biggest thing-like-that in the world. (Yeah, it’s saddening that people don’t know their great-grandparents’ language, but if the Irish government actually cared about preserving Irish, and not just about seeming to care about preserving Irish to an inattentive observer, they could achieve that in waaaaaaay more cost-effective ways.)
What would be better methods of preserving Irish?
AFAIK things are slowly changing for the better, but this is my impression of how they were until recently. (People who have spent more time in Ireland than I have (EDIT: eight months) are welcome to correct me.)
1. Forcing every single school child in Ireland to study it four hours a week fourteen years (even in areas where Irish hasn’t been spoken for centuries, and in a way reminiscent of the study of dead languages and that it is nearly useless for actually having conversations with native speakers, or for remembering anything after a few years out of school) is just a huge waste of time and money, IMO. Making it optional would make much more sense, and make sure that only people actually interested will learn it.
1b. They also spend lots of money for translations of official acts hardly anyone will read. Changing the rule from “the public administration must write all documents in both languages” to (say) “the public administration can write all documents in either language, but must prepare a translation in the other language if requested with a thirty days’ notice” would save lots of money that could be spent otherwise.
2. They don’t even seriously try to assess what the situation in the Gaeltacht is actually like, which IMO is a fundamental prerequisite to fixing it. For example, the 2011 census asked the question “Can you speak Irish?” with possible answers “Yes” and “No”—cf “How well can you speak English?” with answers “Very well”, “Well”, “Not well” and “Not at all” (I’m told that this one was only added in the last census, but why didn’t they do the same with Irish?); and the question “How often do you speak Irish?” has answers “Daily, within the educational system”, “Daily, outside the educational system”, “Weekly”, “More rarely” (IIRC) and “Never”—and the first two were only split in the last census, after people realized that having an answer “Daily” would inflate the numbers because all school children would pick that. (Why didn’t they just ask “How often do you speak Irish, not counting language classes and the like?”?) And I’m not aware of any large-scale survey asking people in the Gaeltacht which language they prefer to use in which circumstances, as there have been for Welsh. (Are they scared of the answers?)
2b. They hardly do anything to make sure that children of living native speakers are comfortable with continuing speaking Irish, i.e. that they are able to cope with Irish in everyday life whenever possible and are forced to recur to English only when actually necessary. For example, they don’t even require Irish on food labels and the like. Living as a monolingual Irish speaker in present-day Ireland would be pretty much impossible, even in the Gaeltacht.
One interesting thing to note is that if you’re accustomed to pledging your allegiance to something every day as a child, while you’re still unable to enter into legal agreements and aren’t thinking about them, it may not occur to you that when you go to school on your 18th birthday, you’ve just pledged your allegiance in a way that… might be legally binding?
Regardless of what sort of government expects it’s children to pledge allegiance every day, do you agree with the practice of making people pledge allegiance?
Allegiance is kind of vague. It could be interpreted to mean doing normal responsibilities (not being a criminal, paying your taxes) or it might be interpreted to mean total obedience. I’m not sure whether to agree or disagree with the pledge. Maybe I should disagree with it on the grounds that it is too vague and therefore doesn’t protect reciters from feeling obligated to obey a tyrant, were one to end up in power.
Of course not. I was stabbing one of our soldiers in the back. Because, frankly, that metaphorical soldier had it coming.
This is actually has been a problem with real-life examples. I’ve read that the oaths in NAZI Germany were specifically to Hitler himself, and that many members of the military felt bound by their oaths to obey orders, even when it was clear the orders shouldn’t be obeyed. I think the critical danger is in giving oaths to an individual (any of which have a very real chance of being corrupted by power, unless they take action to prevent it).
I see the difference that the U.S. pledge of alliegence is to the republic and it’s symbol, the flag. The saving factors to prevent abuses of power are:
The focus on alliegence to the nation as a whole, including all it’s members, it’s leaders, and it’s ideals.
The “with liberty and justice for all” line, which is the guarantee of what the State offers in return. The U.S. has to be worthy of the alliegence.
The extreme other war example is the U.S Civil War, where many military officers left the army to join the Confederacy. They formed ranks and marched right out of West Point because they opposed the U.S. leadership. And the soldiers who stayed let them go, knowing they were going to help the seceding states fight. Even if they disagreed, it was felt the honorable thing to do was to let them go.
This idea shows up specifically in our military training and culture in the definition of lawful orders. The military culture and legal rules define your duty to obey all lawful orders from your chain of command, up to the President. So that if you feel that an order is unlawful it’s actually your duty to disobey. Now, of course, that carries with it all the weight of being the first one to be the opposition, so it’s no guarantee to prevent abuses of power, but it does exist.
I gues my point is that the danger is in making oaths to a person.
I agree that it’s a form of indoctrination for children. But as long as the trade of alliegence and freedom it describes is a true and real one, I think it’s a good thing to keep those principles in their minds.
Ooh, I like these points, Troshen. You might be right that there’s enough “security” built into the pledge. Now you’ve got me questioning whether it might actually protect us.
If nothing else, it would make tyrannical pledges look bad by comparison, perhaps blocking them.
I suppose it could, yet countries don’t require you to do anything to place you in such legal binds. They have laws about “treason” that they can apply when people from their population don’t act out allegiance, whether they have pledged it or not.
Sure but the people have to enforce those laws (the government is something like 3% of the population from what I understand, which means that the people could overwhelm them easily), so if the concept of allegiance is foreign to them, as opposed to being very familiar and feeling like an obligation, or if they haven’t witnessed all the OTHER citizens pledging allegiance, it might feel like an empty word they can safely ignore.
If the concept of allegiance becomes completely foreign to the citizens of a country, than the country effectively ceases to exist.
Fair enough. A more accurate statement would be: “Expecting small children...of, OR ELSE, is a mind-control tactic that I feel is wrong to use on children without the capacity to counter it, which I would expect to find in blatantly controlling nations, and not in a supposedly free nation.”
I just thought the first version flowed better.
It does flow well, in as much as the first thing (ridiculous pledge obligation) is already opposed by most of the audience and so they can be expected to applaud when the enemy is associated with the hated thing. Unfortunately it is a crude harnessing of a fallacy.
And I would have got away with it, too, if it weren’t for your meddling rationality!