Raising High the Flag

For a few summers after college, I worked at a variety of lacrosse camps on campuses around the country including at the United State Military Academy. One of my enduring memories of West Point was the way in which the entire institution came to a halt - traffic stopped, plebes stood at attention, and only the evocative strains of a lone bugle dappled across the Hudson Valley - twice a day when the American flag was raised at sunrise and when it was lowered at sunset.

The plaintive notes of the bugle brought to me echoes of General MacArthur's invocation of "Duty, Honor, Country"; and the daily ritual of paying respect to the flag never failed to engender in me pride to be an American and an appreciation for those patriotic men and women before me who had sacrificed in order that I could live free.

One of my favorite rituals at school is watching as every morning, before classes, two of our middle school students raise high the American flag and every afternoon, before classes end, take down the flag and fold it properly.

Though flag protocol may not seem to be an important educational ritual, I believe that the discipline of students taking responsibility for raising, lowering, folding, and storing the flags is essential to what we want out students to be: respectful citizens of a democracy.

Respect connotes awareness beyond self and is rooted in the Latin prefix "re" or "back" and the verb "specere" or "look"; thus, respect literally means "looking back." Respect is a measure of the extent to which we are deferential to the past, the extent to which the past informs our present and our future.

Memorial Day should be a day of respect. Begun after the Civil War as a way to commemorate the fallen, Memorial Day is an opportunity for Americans to take time from their hectic lives in order to pay their respects to those patriotic men and women who have given their lives so that our democratic ideals may continue to shine brightly. Unfortunately, as an American holiday, Memorial Day has slowly diminished in cultural importance so that it is now better known as the culmination of a three-day weekend announcing the beginning of summer (not to mention the day on which the Indianapolis 500 is run).

Memorial Day should be an opportunity for us to respect our past and the sacrifices made by those who believed in an American democracy dedicated to "certain unalienable Rights" including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Living in the land of plenty - car racing on TV, Budweiser on sale, hot dogs on the grille - it's understandable why some Americans might not remember to respect the past. But veterans don't forget.

The following is an excerpt from a letter I recently received from Incline local Jerry Stewart, who just returned from a trip to North Africa: "Quite a home-coming for this old vet, as few people remember that the Allies staged such an invasion in 1942 and landed their forces at Casablanca. The US military units plowed north and east to meet Rommel on the sands of Libya for the first major land combat encounter of the war between GIs and German troops. Let history record that our troops and equipment performed poorly against the seasoned Krauts and their superior guns."

Memorial Day should be an opportunity for us to remember . . . and if we cannot remember, at least we can respect the sacrifices that Jerry Stewart and others have made for us.

Respect is essential to a democracy because knowing from whence we've come and how our past defines us help us to serve America as respectful citizens - citizens who listen, citizens who participate, and citizens who question.

These are the citizens that schools should be attempting to nurture.

--Steve McKibben
5/28/06