Pool: On loving America
Published 5:15 am Monday, July 3, 2023
- Frank T. Pool
One of the things I’ve done with these columns over the last 15 years is to recognize holidays. This year is no exception. This one will be published on the 4th of July.
As someone who instinctively looks to history, I started by searching for some famous Independence Day speeches. What I found only reminded me of the ways the country has changed over time, and also how each of these addresses dealt with the concerns of their own times.
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There’s a time to be critical of ourselves as a nation, but we have the rest of the year for such self-examination. The Fourth of July is a time to set aside quarrels, important as they may be, and to seek out the best that we have done and been.
Many people around the world would very much like to come live here. Sometimes it’s because conditions in their homeland are intolerable, and they are pushed out of places where they’d rather stay. Still, they want to be here, because life is better.
I’ve written before about the time I saw the musical “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway. There was a lot of laughter involved, but the emotional high point was when a young African woman sang about her hopes and dreams for herself and her family in what she understood to be paradise on earth. “Sal Tlay Ka Siti.”
Salt Lake City.
Many in the audience found it amusing that she could imagine paradise in Utah, but I was moved by her yearning to find a place for herself and her children where warlords didn’t steal her property, where the police were not part of organized crime, where you could count on having clean water and electricity, and where she could work and live in dignity and peace.
Some of the people who seem to love this country the most have not been here all their lives.
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I once had a cabbie who talked about his life. He was a young fellow from Jordan, neatly dressed, with a shave and a haircut and good English. He spoke about how happy he was to be in America, how he was raising his young children to believe in hard work and self-improvement in a place where those things were possible. He loves this country.
Last year when I taught full-time, one of the first lessons I gave was unpacking Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence. I taught them about words that change meaning over time, especially “men” and “happiness.” (Many people misunderstand the right to happiness, thinking it’s an emotion, when what Jefferson meant was human flourishing in a just society.)
I also talked about “created equal,” and what that did and did not mean. I talked about the context of the time and of a world that did not accept that all people were entitled to equal worth and dignity. And I also talked about equal rights.
As I was talking, I brought myself up short. Not all my students had equal rights. Those who had been brought to this country by their parents, who were not citizens, simply lacked rights that other classmates had, due to the location of their birth and their parents’ choices. That realization sobered me.
My students last year were different from any others I had taught. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t get them to engage in class discussions, to ask questions, or to laugh. I also couldn’t get my first period class to say the pledge of allegiance.
I’ve had some students in the past who did not say the pledge. I don’t believe in compulsory patriotism. Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to speak. Nevertheless, I encouraged students to stand silently as a mark of respect. There might be a couple who declined to do that, but most kids stood and a few said it aloud.
Not my first period class. I gave them a journal writing assignment asking them to explain why they did or did not say the pledge. Most of them said they didn’t know what it was about, a few expressed the view that this country is racist and oppressive, and one rapscallion said he was just too lazy.
I asked them every day to rise, and they didn’t, except for a few. One was a very religious boy from a socially conservative home who skipped school often. And then there was a girl I’ll call “Amelia.”
She’s the kind of kid that teachers love. Though she was as silent as the others, she was conscientious, very bright, writing complete and fluent responses. She dressed modestly and tastefully. She was also in the school’s ROTC program, and like others came to class occasionally in her uniform.
I gave the kids an open-ended assignment about something that had been important to them. Amelia talked about her father, and about when they crossed the border, they had to be careful to be arrested by the right people. Unlike classmates who were born here, she did not have an equal right to travel back and forth to where her grandparents lived.
And yet she stood every day for the pledge of allegiance when almost nobody else did.
I hope she gets her citizenship soon. Happy Independence Day, y’all.