Me: *explaining how much United States Americans are expected to sing or hear the national anthem and say the pledge of allegiance*
My teenager: ....are we sure the United States of America isn't a cult?
Explaining the cult of American Football and the American High School culture around it and School Spirit as a concept made things worse
My 17 year old is sad knowing I grew up in that system
And I honestly totally get it
It doesn't seem that weird until you move countries
It's *so* weird (as a non-American). I think there's a greater or lesser appreciation for the pledge being weird (creepy) and maybe the flags everywhere being A Lot.
High school sport being a professional-level Big Deal is probably less appreciated for being as fucking bizarre and unhealthy when you're steeped in it.
From what I remember (and to be fair it's been over 20 years since I lived there) but
-we said the pledge every morning at school (we were supposed to through out public school and it was announced over the Intercom but everyone ignored it in highschool)
- we sang the national anthem at every sporting event from little league to professional
- we did the pledge at the opening of most events that had more than like 10 people. I'm talking school award ceremonies, school concerts, graduations, conferences, etc
- the national anthem was shoe horned almost everywhere
- school spirit/religious devotion to football went hand in hand with this
- spirit week is a week leading up to the homecoming game/dance where each day has a theme. The pep rallies are real.
I didn't participate the one year I was actually attending highschool at the highschool (I did the rest of time taking classes at the community college for highschool/university credit) and my principal pulled me aside and said my college application wouldn't be good enough if I didn't show "school spirit"
-high school assemblies started with the pledge and ended with the school song. This was mandatory and they got very upset if you refused to participate because the final bell had already rung
The obsession with highschool football and the related concept of "school spirit" feeds directly into nationalism imo
It's so overwhelmingly everywhere that you kinda just take it as background noise until you move countries and it's like "what the shit was all of that!"
I remain like o_O at my first IRL US friend (living here) insisting the pledge wasn't *that* fucked up, because you could sit it out.
Uh. We both know that's going to vary wildly depending on your region/school.
This was not someone with positive high school experiences/feelings about US nationalism, but they were very young.
We certainly do sing the national anthem a lot in school. At least the Te Reo lyrics are included now (it was patchy/only more liberal schools that included them when I was young).
We're generally fairly casual about national pride on average, however my experience is super skewed by being raised by anti-establishment parents/social groups then going into healthcare and biological sciences where being actively nationalistic would be very unusual.
I was in the Naval Reserve, however, which is where you'd expect the most of that shit: while I'm sure there were a bunch of people more conservative than I'd like to know, it still wasn't as ott as the impression I have of your average US school. :p There were definitely less flags on Naval bases than various streets I've walked down in the US. 😅
