By Jason Schwalm
Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) teacher Dan Holden knows how difficult it is to keep students’ attention. While physics teachers can launch potatoes or pumpkins across a football field to demonstrate acceleration and velocity, such spectacular methods are not readily available to middle school social studies teachers.
Holden wanted to grab his students’ attention, but he got more than he bargained for. On Monday, August 21, in his lecture on the First Amendment, wHolden set fire to two, small-sized American flags to prompt his students to write about free speech. He has since been removed from the classroom.
Holden’s actions undoubtedly represent a lapse in professional judgment. Setting fire to anything in a public school is ill-advised. Moreover, while the teacher might believe his action to be non-partisan or politically neutral, that is a difficult distinction for seventh-graders to make. Additionally, using a middle school civics classroom as a forum for personal political sentiment is worthy of reprimand, irrespective of circumstance.
Not surprisingly, this incident has prompted consideration of more than just the fate of Holden’s career. Flag burning is viciously contested in politics.
The emotion that surrounds this debate is evident in many of the reader comments made regarding this event on the Courier-Journal website. “You try and burn an American flag or a cross in my presence and you won’t be standing on two feet very long,” said one respondent. Many believe, in short, that Holden was not only in error, but has committed a transgression that we are morally justified in quelling.
The logic of the argument is straightforward – as we protect our country, so should we protect its flag. But it is here that we get into trouble. To see an attack on the flag as an attack on the United States is to say that the flag and the country are interchangeable. They are simply not.
Our flag has extraordinary personal value to most Americans, and that is not to be taken lightly. A U.S. citizen burning an American flag sends a horrible message to our military families. It is a despicable, insensitive act, but it is not illegal.
Moreover, it should not be illegal. The uproar that follows every isolated incident of flag burning is just more gas on the fire. Every time the legislature passes flag protection statutes, they lend legitimacy to a foolish political stunt. When the United States Congress passed the Flag Protection Amendment in 1989, it set off mass incidences of flag burning in a dozen cities or more.
The flag of the United States is a powerful symbol of freedom, but it is still only a symbol. To see our flag and our country as the same thing is to reduce America to a mere representation of itself. And to see a burnt flag as damage to American pride is to drastically underestimate our country’s strength. Flag burning will never be a serious challenge to civic life so long as we value our country more than we value comforting iconography.
America is not a collection of symbols. It is not the White House and McDonalds and Michael Jordan and its flag. America is an idea enshrined in the hearts of its citizens. And it is not flammable.
Jason Schwalm is first-year student in the Brandeis School of Law. E-mail him at opinion@louisvillecardinal.com.
