Pushing the right sort of patriotism

Patriotic sentiment is often very powerful and deeply felt and can at times be destructive of the ties which bind us to other human beings. Although the cultivation of national sentiment has traditionally been an aim of education, some people may ask whether it is time to cease to promote it, especially in view of the aspiration to peace and reconciliation expressed in the Belfast Agreement of last year.

I believe that it is still justifiable for educators to promote patriotic sentiment as long as the patriotism concerned is liberal in character.

Where informed by an appropriately generous notion of nationhood, patriotism can be compatible with respect for diversity and with the unthinking of borders. The liberal patriot is one who is prepared to unthink borders both internal and external.

Unthinking internal borders means that the nation must be defined inclusively. This means that the definition of citizenship must include all inhabitants without regard for religion, moral/political beliefs, sex, race, language or ethnic/cultural background. In terms of this definition, the nation refers to a civic rather than to an ethnic or cultural community. Indeed, ethnicity is not at all a necessary criterion for belonging to a nation in this sense. For example, the Jewish members of the Oireachtas are citizens of Ireland, whereas many individuals, who are ethnically Irish, are citizens of the USA, Britain, Australia or New Zealand.

Unthinking external borders means that the nation must be understood expansively. This involves being expansive or outward-looking in moral concern for the welfare of the citizens of other nations and in generous appreciation of the culture and achievements of other countries.

Where patriotism is understood in this way, the cultivation of national sentiment will not lead to the promotion of uncritical chauvinism, tribalism or xenophobia. Rather it will engender a sense of sympathetic imaginative engagement with the lives of other human beings both within and beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.

Determining how a liberal and critical patriotism might be given expression within the school curriculum is a large issue. Teachers might seek to shift the focus of pride from achievement in war and conquest to pride in achievements in the arts and sciences and in humanitarian service to other nations; to foster a more objective understanding of the injustice perpetrated by a nation as well as that suffered by it.

The record of a nation in protecting human and animal rights and in promoting civic and religious tolerance should be subjected to critical scrutiny. Teachers need to be alert to the understandable human tendency to identify instances of injustice and oppression more readily in other countries than in our own. A positive and critical nation-centred civic education would also endeavour to develop in young people a sense of irony and an ability to laugh at the foibles and idiosyncrasies of the citizens of their own nation.

More than any other area of the curriculum, literature can help us to learn that "every other person is basically you" (the explanation of one man for his efforts to rescue Jewish victims of the Nazis). Part of the thrust of developing patriotism in civic education should be towards the cultivation of a an enlarged understanding of ourselves and of our identity and a greater empathy with the lives of other human beings at home and overseas.