On second thoughts, I withdraw my assertion “in ALL situations”. The Olympic Games and international championship events spring to mind as situations where the flag of one nation is raised above that of another: during medal presentations.
Well, are you ugly?
I know you’re trying to make a clever point, but you didn’t ask if it would be a big deal, you asked if it would be odd. Donating large posters of your head to be hung in every classroom is very odd and unusual, whereas having a flag in every classroom is not. Do you see the distinction? Both Sua and I agree that the poster thing would be very odd, but that has no bearing on our or at least my) position on having the flag hung in every classroom.
The very oddness of your request may require you to donate additional money beyond the cost of the posters. I imagine if you built the university a new library or something, you could get a picture of you hung as a condition of that.
My point is, of course, that you can’t dismiss something simply because it doesn’t do physical or financial harm to someone. It’s also possible for it to be inappropriate without doing harm per se.
So you say it’s unusual, ie, not everyone else is doing it. What if I talked 75% of American universities into hanging my pictures. Would that make it any less objectionable for your university to do it too?
What I want to know is, why would someone be offended by the flag? It’s just a piece of cloth.
I should point out first that the pledge of allegiance thing was something of a joke. Mars Horizon appears to be the only one who got it… but the point is, flags are in school classrooms to give the students something to salute when saying the pledge.
It isn’t that I’m offended by the flags; the point I was making was that sticking them everywhere you possibly can isn’t patriotic, its a waste of money and cheapens the flag as a symbol.
And to clear things up, this isn’t a Florida-statewide policy… for now it remains limited to UCF.
Oh, and I did have to pay for them- not for the flags themselves, but for the wall mounts and the flagpoles (not quite sure about the flagpoles).
I should probably point out that a lot of the current flap is over the source of the funding whence come the flags at last- Shannon Burke, a local talk radio host who has made several headlines with tender appeals to the better interests of humanity like the following:
“I’m shocked that they’re allowing any Arabs and Muslims into this country” (after the events of Sept. 11th)
“Before there can be any peace in the Middle East…we have to wipe out almost an entire people (the Palestinians), but it seems to be the only practical way to accomplish it.”
“The Palestinian people are apes.”
I’d never heard of the guy before the flag thing, but frankly I’d rather they had given his money back.
Sorry… I meant whither, not whence.
I don’t remember seeing classroom flags here at JHU. (Although I don’t see WHY, we certainly spend enough on stuff with no definite purpose already.) It’s a nice change from high school. Due to Wisconsin law, recitation of the pledge on a daily basis was mandatory. But I’m happily out of there now, and the number of times I’ll have to do that again during my life is down to n+1, where n is the number of degrees I get from American institutions and the 1 comes from my little sister’s high school graduation in a few years.
Perspective of a New Zealander.
Down under, we are not nearly patriotic enough. We tend to shoot down our high flyers and suffer a little from nationalistic insecurity. Not many NZ flags are seen anywhere. And every couple of months someone launces a plan to change either our flag or out national anthem; claiming that it is a symbol of colonial repression and proposing an alternative that conforms to the flavour-of-the-month political agenda.
We are currntly experiencing huge immigration and our cities are turning very multicultural. Secondayr schools in particular. the school where I teach is slightly unusual in that it only has about 45 different ethnic groups represented among its 950 students. One class I taught had 20 different languages spoken by 28 students. In the school cafeteria we fly flags of all countries represented at the school, but there are no flags at the front of the school or in the office or reception areas.
In view of this I think it entirely appropriate to fly a NZ flag in my classroom. I bought it myself. I think there is a need for us kiwis to celebrate our national identity and sink our roots a bit deeper. The flag is part of that. I have only ben challenged on it once, and then it was a request to fly other nation’s flags in my classroom.
That’s my story. In Florida I guess you would have to look a bit more closely at the reasons why there is such a strong opinion on either side. I see nothing wrong with flags in classrooms per se, and believe it is quite important in my particular situation.
Yes, but you still have yet to point out what this has to do with the flag. My statement that it’s not a big deal because it’s not hurting anyone took into account that it is not unusual for a flag to be flown in a classroom and is, in fact, quite normal. Your bizarre argument that a giant head poster is analogous to a flag in this regard is, well, bizarre.
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You are, of course, assuming that I found your giant head poster objectionable. Should you have done something like that when I was going to school there, I would make fun of it but I don’t think I would have any reaction other than that. Because it isn’t hurting anyone.
Let’s go through your arguments though, once again, because you keep changing them. You first made this claim:
Now, this implies that you think that having flags in the classroom is odd. Or should be considered odd. Msmith and I both stated (OK, only msmith did but I thought the same thing, he just got there first) that posters of your head in the classroom would indeed be odd. Then you came back with this:
No one said it would be a big deal, we both just agreed that it would be odd, whereas a flag in the classroom is not. See the distinction?
I then made that exact point in a response to you.
You then came up with the response at the top of my post here. You still seem to be under the impression that I would find giant posters of your head objectionable in some way. I wouldn’t. Just odd. Which is what your original point was. It just has nothing to do with the flag argument whatsoever.
However, you do finally make the point that you were trying to make all along about how just because something doesn’t hurt anyone doesn’t make it inappropriate. I agree. But just because something is inappropriate without hurting anyone doesn’t make it a big deal. In fact, if it isn’t hurting anyone then it’s not a big deal at all. My original point still stands.