Resolved: Patriotism should be taught to children in school.

1) Pledge My opponent contends that although they may not understand things we teach, it's still taught and since the pledge is patriotic, then we are teaching patriotism. However, teaching is communication... it requires one person to speak and one (or more) person/people to listen. What if teacher in your school started speaking German? If you don't understand German, it doesn't matter what they're saying, you aren't learning, and, for all intensive purposes, they aren't teaching. They aren't presenting the information you need to know in a way that you can understand it. Same way with the pledge. Unless the people actually understand what it means, it loses all value as a teaching and becomes simply a reciting at the beginning of each day. 2) History class a) Alright, history classes don't teach that all Muslims are terrorists... but you did say that the media does. The media is reporting history (it's already happened) and it's being taught to children who attend school. When we teach this type of patriotism to children in school, we're reinforcing false ideas and justifying a lot of actions that maybe we should question, or at least analyze to understand more about why things are the way they are now. We've made a lot of mistakes as a nation, but skewing them to look less bad on the U.S. only makes it worse. We're basically advocating the hiding of flaws, or distorting the truth to make ourselves look better. b) The media has lots to do with the resolution. The general public gets many ideas from the media. These are passed, directly or indirectly, into the ideas of many school-age children. If these ideas promote patriotism (which many do) then they promote arrogance and several other ideas that would otherwise have negative connotations. c) What the schools in Germany taught Hitler is irrelevant. Did Hitler have a strong sense of pride in his country? Yes! (well... more of what it COULD be... but he was still proud). Mussolini had similar feelings for Italy. Both were fascist dictators; both committed atrocities; both are prime examples of how patriotism is bad for a country. 3) Shady I wasn't trying to imply anything by re-iterating that you dropped this... I did that for my sake; so I knew I covered all aspects of your speech. 4) Prevents rebellion I may have regressed a little when I was talking about this... I'll concede that. But everything still links back to loyalty. And how different is loyalty in, say, religion then to loyalty in a nation. They're almost the same idea; most of it directly applies to the debate. Cold war was a rally against a perceived enemy (patriotism). Hitler's rebellion had patriotic views. He was tired of his government being apathetic and sought to change it. He was loyal to his country and sought only to better it. Now, his actions were completely immoral and we can't forget he committed the biggest atrocity the world has ever seen (and hopefully will ever see), but he did look to improve Germany (patriotism). The Iraq War "tried to oust a dictator and end terrorism" in the hopes of making the American public feel more at ease... it's support came from those loyal to America. Gaza is loyalty to religion, not nation. I'll concede that. When one practices patriotism (devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty) [def from R1], and someone comes and threatens said country, support and defense mean an instant conflict. If an unpatriotic citizen gets enough followers and a patriotic citizen gets enough followers, you've got a rebellion. It's this devotion that closes our minds and makes the population more able to be swayed by emotions and less by facts. This is why patriotism is bad. Patriotism brings about many conflicts and shouldn't be taught to today's children. Good look to you too, and a great debate as well. I really hope the Chiefs can get something going this season... maybe even a Superbowl appearance :)