An interesting piece with this title in Sunday's Boston Globe describes efforts by the French government to encourage schools to emphasize patriotism to give students a sense of French identity and make them less likely to sympathize with or become terrorists.

I was particularly struck by a contrast noted by the author: in France, patriotism is being called upon by the socialist government as a reinforcement of values of the French republic, while in the US, a call to teach patriotism is seen as a conservative principle. The author attributes this to divergent views on multiculturalism as envisioned in the two countries.

For me, this may help to shed light on some of the opinions and controversies I have read on this message board, and on the ways some posters living on opposite sides of the Atlantic sometimes seem to be speaking at cross purposes.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/201...TXI/story.html

May be relevant: http://www.fodors.com/community/fodo...ationalism.cfm

And just how should a patriot act?


Thin

Patriotic?

Sounds as though the French are trying to use patriotism to bring their countrymen together.

That is not the case in the U.S., patriotism is used to divide.

I seem to remember when the French told us, and rather bluntly, that we were about to step in it when we tried to recreate VE Day in the Middle East and the result was that flurry of "Freedon Fries" and "I'll never set foot in France" routines. BOTH of those were in the name of so-called "patriotism."

The wine sellers in Napa must have been over the moon.

I suspect it would be interesting to read the results of a poll designed to determine exactly what the "values of the French Republic" actually are. I would assume they would include responses from all those Paris housing projects, too.

A key element of French patriotism is secularism, which I fully support.

One of the points made in the article is that French patriotic beliefs favor homogeneity of values, and that previous immigrant groups wanted to assimilate and consider French heritage their own, but that since the Second World War immigrants have not taken up that goal.

The article starts with the mention of students (some of whom probably live in the housing projects Dukey references) who did not participate in the moment of silence after the Charlie Hebdo tragedy. The idea is that the government wants those students to identify more as French and believes that is best achieved by teaching French patriotic symbols.

From the article:

"In their eyes, multiculturalism, which allows individuals to define themselves in terms of their ethnic or religious identities, risks debasing the currency of French republicanism."

Should you have to mimic the French way of life right down to mopping your plate with bread to be a patriot? fine line there between racism and 'protecting French valaues'.

My ex-wife, a French all her life says she wants 'to preserve the French way of life' - she is a real liberal in most regards anbd she is not anti-Moslem but thinks all immigrants should embarce the French way of life.

Can a Moslem women wearing a head scarf be a patriot? To me yes, the the French no. Yet old nuns wear very similar black hats sans problemo.

From the current French constitution dating from 1958, the princple values of the republic are:

1. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
2. Secularism
3. The French language

The democratic principles of France are:

1. An indivisible, secular, democratic and social republic
2. Total equality between men and women, refusal of all discrimination. Refusal of discrimination for sexual orientation was reinforced in 2008.
3. The declaration of human rights from 1789.

Naturally, as in any other country, the application of all of these values is not always perfect.

There is an error in the article. The phrase "under God" was not added until the early years of the Eisenhower administration, not in 1942. I clearly remember the shift when as a child in the NYC school system.

Trying to make all immigrants clones of natural born French folks could well backfire it seems. And how can you assimilate by creating ghettos of tower blocks that are exclusively immigrant - poor immigrants so the areas become dens of crime, unemployment and hopelessness - somehow improve the conditions in those areas will reap benefits of not alienating the newcomers to the French country and culture.

I have absolutely never heard of a single tower block that was exclusively immigrant in France. Exclusively poor, yes. Exclusively immigrant, never. That was one of the main things that the foreign media absolutely never understood about suburban "riots" (which were almost never riots -- just some car burnings, of which England has double the number if you care to check the statistics). The 'rioters' were black, white, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, French and immigrant. That apparently does not fit "Anglo-Saxon" patterns. I remember reading that during the last set of riots (2008?), the largest number of youths arrested were of Portuguese origin -- which is totally normal for anybody who knows that the largest immigrant group in France is from Portugal. This does not fit the concepts of foreign media, so they generally just ignore details like that.

PalenQ, I don't think the authorities are trying to make the immigrants clones at all. Accepting values like equality and secularism would make many countries proud, not just France. And other countries hate the idea. I know which side I support.

Two basic French classroom rituals make no sense in the contemporary world.

1. Already in the 1940s, my parents (non-French) and fellow counselors (mostly French) found it ridiculous that the children living in the group home for Holocaust survivors--i.e. Jewish--should memorize the phrase "nos ancêtres les Gaulois" as part of their history lesson.

2. La Marseillaise is a song whose first stanza mentions the invaders who must be repelled in blood. Given France's geographical position in Europe, immediate cross-border invaders are not visible, but a figurative reading could be made for the song, which would then apply to the Muslims as invaders. That would be counter-productive.

It is unfortunate that schools are asked to solve social problems that go far beyond their scope through meaningless phraseology.

PalenQ, I don't think the authorities are trying to make the immigrants clones at all. Accepting values like equality and secularism would make many countries proud, not just France. And other countries hate the idea. I know which side I support.>

I agree with that goal but at leat in some French I know it would go much farther and has like the head scarf ban - the most aggregious of trying to make them more French and mosques - some I know think they should also abandon their religion.

But the general values you say here should be universal yes like secularism and equality - something the U S of A sorely lacks on both counts - "Jesus protect me from your followers" is a bumper sticket I've seen that sums up the intrusion of religion in our lives - many French are either non-believers or wishy-washy Catholics thank god!

Michael, during the regime of the 3rd Republic, the textbook in question (Le Petit Lavisse) actually said <I>"Autrefois, notre pays s’appelait la Gaule et ses habitants, les Gaulois."<i> ("In the past, our country was called Gaul and its inhabitants were knowns as the Gauls.")

That is a far cry from the myth of claiming that every French person is from that origin. Even most ethnic French do not consider themselves to have ever been Gauls, since they were Breton, Savoyard, Provençal, Basque, Romanichel or whatever. But the country that became France was formerly known as Gaul, so it is really misplaced to be offended by this affirmation, even if the notion must be greatly expanded in modern times. If Jewish children voluntarily excluded themselves from the concept of French life already back then, I suppose it is not surprising that the aged adults still feel excluded if the misunderstanding has continued for the past 70 years.

<i>And just how should a patriot act?</i>

Setting up a complex and ineffective group of minimum wage jobsworths who fight the war against toothpaste & shoes, reducing people's freedoms, encouraging people to do naughty things then jail them.

The arguments for this start off on the assumption that all France's malcontented poor need to do is to listen to the clever white people.

But the only successful example in European history of using the educational system to manage potentially revolutionary dissidence away was a government working with the dissidents, and having the humility and pragmatism to reject its own prejudices.

In 1795 the British government - which still discriminated against Catholics in Britain and in Ireland - decided to provide a substantial contribution to the education of Catholic priests in Ireland, both by funding most of the construction of an Irish national priests' seminary at Maynooth, and by providing an annual grant for its running costs.

English (and Irish) Protestant bigots, like Irish nationalists, opposed the plan. They lost the argument - and the London government continued to fund the seminary until an independent government in Dublin assumed the obligation well over a century later.

Though many Irish priests agreed with the intellectual case for Irish independence (an argument Britain happily ,discussed in its Parliament), there has not been a single proven example of an Irish priest assigned to an English parish (Maynooth provided a substantial proportion of England's priests till the 1970s) providing any support for anti-British violence. Unlike French and British Muslims, not a single Catholic from the British mainland raised a weapon against their country's troops during the Northern Irish Troubles between 1965 and 1997.

The subsidy didn't fund lectures on British values (which would have been both unBritish and unIrish). It simply ensured that the Church's teaching at the time, and not the unchecked rants of unschooled clerics, was imparted both to the priests, and through them to the faithful in both Ireland and mainland Britain - however uncomfortable British governments of the day might have found it.

The Maynooth subsidy worked because it didn't seek to propagandise English views. It worked with the rub of Irish Catholicism: not against it.

Unlike France's laicite, the culture that created the Maynooth grant didn't ban religious headwear: it paid the salaries (in both Britain and Ireland) of teacher-nuns wearing far more religious headcoverings than the hijab, and of priests wearing cassocks and birettas to teach in - as today, it encourages turbans as well as hijabs.

France's laicite gives subsidies to Catholic cathedrals, but not to mosques. It gives cash to Alsace Christian and Jewish schools but not to Muslim schools. It doesn't serve halal food in schools that serve fish on Fridays.

Does anyone really believe disaffected Muslims will see "patriotism" lessons as anything more than a hypocritical kaffir attempt at brainwashing?

the U.K. of course being a great example of how to meld folks in one provence - Northern Ireland to each others and smoot over religious differences - just throw all the terrorists suspects in jail without giving them any rights at all or even the chance to confront the charge - just like out Gitmo I know.

France has a daunting task if achieving its pie in the sky goals.

<I>France's laicite gives subsidies to Catholic cathedrals, but not to mosques. It gives cash to Alsace Christian and Jewish schools but not to Muslim schools. It doesn't serve halal food in schools that serve fish on Fridays.</I>

This is called "lying by omission."

The government owns every religious building built before 1905. It is <b>obliged</b> to maintain the buildings by law. Most of them have been put at the disposal of the various religious authorities. Others (like the Sainte Chapelle) have been deconsecrated. France is obliged to pay for Christian and Jewish schools in Alsace-Moselle because German law is still applied there and there is no separation of church and state. Many cities in Alsace-Moselle have financed mosques because they are allowed to do so, unlike cities in the rest of France. Priests, rabbis and imans receive government salaries in Alsace-Moselle. "Fish on Friday" is a health tradition, and in any case fish is halal. Almost every school in France proposes vegetarian and non-pork alternatives to the basic school menu, although by law it is out of the question to buy halal meat. There are confessional schools for children whose parents require completely different menus. These are financed by the French government as well. Any other complaints?