Is patriotism good for democracy? A study of high school seniors' patriotic commitments

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 87, Issue 8, 2006, Pages 600-607

  Kahne, Joseph ^a   Middaugh, Ellen ^b  

^a MILLS COLLEGE   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33645807383     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170608700815     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Chester E. Finn, Jr., "Teaching Patriotism: An Educational Resource for Americans," National Review Online, 6 December 2001, www.nation-alreview.com/comment/comment-finnprint120601.html.
2. Chester E. Finn, "Patriotism Revisited," Center for Education Reform, 1 October 2001, http://edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction= document&documentID=208§ionID=69NEWSYEAR=2001.
3. William Damon, "What Schools Should Do to Prepare Students for Democracy," paper presented at a meeting on "Youth and Civic Engagement," sponsored by the Center for Information and Research on Learning and Citizenship, Washington, D.C., March 2005.
4. Michael Apple, "Patriotism, Pedagogy, and Freedom: On the Educational Meanings of September 11th," Teachers College Record, December 2002, pp. 1760-72;
5. Chris Coryn, James Beale, and Krista Myers, "Response to September 11: Anxiety, Patriotism, and Prejudice in the Aftermath of Terror," Current Research in Social Psychology, March 2004, pp. 1-23;
6. and M. Samuel Haque, "Patriotism Versus Imperialism," Peace Review, vol. 15, 2003, pp. 451-56.
7. Patrick G. Coy, Gregory M. Maney, and Lynne M. Woehrle, "Contesting Patriotism," Peace Review, vol. 15, 2003, pp. 463-70;
8. and Martha Nussbaum and Joshua Cohen, eds., For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
9. John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: Free Press, 1916), pp. 87, 83.
10. Igor Primoratz, Patriotism (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2002).
11. Stephen Nathanson, "In Defense of 'Moderate Patriotism,'" Ethics, vol. 99, 1989, p. 535.
12. Benjamin W. Barber, "Constitutional Faith," in Nussbaum and Cohen, p. 32.
13. R. Freeman Butts, Civitas: A Framework for Civic Education (Calabasas, Calif.: Center for Civic Education, 1991), p. 31.
14. Robert T. Schatz, Ervin Staub, and Howard Lavine, "On the Varieties of National Attachment: Blind Versus Constitutional Patriotism," Political Psychology, March 1999, pp. 151-74.
15. Seymour Feshbach, "Attachment Processes in Political Ideology: Patriotism and Nationalism," in Jacob Gerwitz and William Kurtines, eds., Intersections with Attachment (Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991), pp. 207-26.
16. Schatz, Staub, and Lavine, p. 153.
17. Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
18. Harwood Institute, Post-September 11th Patriotism, Civic Involvement and Expectations for the 2002 Election Season (Bethesda, Md.: Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, 2002).
19. For information on the campaign, see www.cms-ca.org/index.html.
20. For a report summarizing findings from our broader study, see www.cms-ca.org/civic_survey_final.pdf.
21. Participating schools were selected from various geographic areas to provide a portrait of current conditions representing a range of factors including student race, ethnicity, and academic performance levels. The indicator of general patriotism was adapted from items used in the civic education study by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. (Information on die study is available at www.wam.umd.edu/~jtpurta/studentQ.htm.)
22. The measures of blind and constructive patriotism were modified from Schatz, Staub, and Lavine, op. cit. The indicator of active patriotism was developed by the Harwood Institute (www.theharwoodinstitute.org). All items within the scales for constructive patriotism, blind patriotism, active patriotism, and general patriotism were entered into a factor analysis and emerged as four distinct scales. Please contact the authors at jkahne@mills.edu for more details on the measures used in this study.
23. There are numerous ways to deepen the knowledge base in this area. We are currently undertaking a study, for example, that looks at the ways particular classroom contexts and opportunities influence patriotic commitments.
24. Students, we should point out, were not uniformly positive. Only 28% agreed, for example, that "people in government care about what people like me and my family need."
25. Consistent with this finding, 30% of students in a national study reported that the most common theme in their U.S. history and social studies classes had been "great American heroes and the virtues of the American system of government," while only 11% said the most common theme was "problems facing the country today." See Peter Levine and Mark H. Lopez, Themes Emphasized in Social Studies and Civics Classes: New Evidence (Washington, D.C.: Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, 2004).
26. Stephen Macedo et al., Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2005).
27. We judged an individual to be endorsing committed patriotism and constructive patriotism if his or her average response on the items measuring those criteria was greater than 3 and if his or her average response on the items measuring uncritical patriotism was less than 3 (on a 5-point scale on which 3 represented neutral). Only one item measured an individual's commitment to active patriotism, so in that instance, a 4, which signified agreement, was required to be considered an endorsement. Had we used 4 as our standard for endorsing all given forms of patriotism, the percentage of students endorsing a democratic vision of patriotism would have been even lower.
28. Macedo et al., Stephen Macedo et al., Democracy at Risk: How Political Choices Undermine Citizen Participation, and What We Can Do About It, 2005, op. cit.
29. Cynthia Gibson and Peter Levine, The Civic Mission of Schools (New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning, 2003).
30. Margaret Nash, "How to Be Thankful for Being Free: Searching for a Convergence of Discourses on Teaching Patriotism, Citizenship, and United States History," Teachers College Record, vol. 107, 2005, pp. 214-40.
31. Jennifer Piscatelli, "Pledge of Allegiance," Education Commission of the States, 2003, www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/47/20/4720.htm.
32. Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa in quotegarden.com/patriotism.html.
33. See Walter Parker's article in this special section, p. 613.