Free Expression in Classrooms: Inclusion or Ideological Gatekeeping?
Walk into a public university lecture room in 1996, you will practically notably see a small American flag near the whiteboard, maybe the country flag, and a few motivational posters. Visit that same lecture room this day, and the walls tell a extra hard story. The American flag maybe there, or it will probably have been replaced with a rotating gallery of identification or social circulate flags. In some locations, instructors have been instructed to take down Pride and Bl
Inclusion or Erasure: What Does Removing School Prayer Really Mean?
A few years ago I sat in a crowded gym on a Friday night while a high school football team took the field. The announcer asked for a “moment,” and the place fell quiet. Some bowed their heads. Others stared at the flag. A few teenagers whispered and snickered, then went silent. When the whistle blew, you could feel the room exhale. Later I heard two parents arguing in the parking lot about whether that quiet pause was a prayer by another name, and whether anything like it b
When Patriotism Needs Permission: The School Flag Debate
The bell had slightly rung whilst a sophomore in a hoodie walked into the vice crucial’s place of job with a small American flag stitched to his backpack strap. He become now not waving it, now not chanting, just there after a teacher informed him the patch could “ship a message.” Down the hall, a rainbow banner hung from a counseling workplace door. In the library, a reveal protected flags tied to history months. The scholar was once well mannered, but harassed. Why are Am
From Family-First to System-First? The American Flag as a Symbol in a Shifting Educational Landscape
On the first day of my student teaching, I walked into a fourth grade classroom before daylight. The room felt like a freshly set stage, bulletin boards papered in bright blues, sharp pencils lined up like soldiers. The American flag hung in the front corner. It did not feel political. It felt like a small lighthouse in the room, the quiet anchor that had probably hung in the same spot for a decade. By October, that same flag meant very different things. A new family fro
Supporting the Military: What Flying the American Flag Means to Me
The flag outside my house snaps in the high plains wind like a sail eager for open water. Some mornings I catch it glowing with that first slant of sun, the red so rich it looks wet, the blue almost purple. I have raised it in rain squalls and in powdery snow, during quiet Tuesdays and on the loudest of July nights. It started as a simple ritual. It became a promise. I grew up watching a neighbor, a Vietnam veteran with a limp and a grin, raise his flag at dawn with a ca