School spirit as a precursor to national pride
Alexis Zygan, Contributor
Anyone who has ever taken a Sociology 100 class has uncovered the real purpose of the education system: to train students to uphold the systems that maintain a society within adulthood. This often takes the place of teaching students how to succeed in adulthood – which is why there is no education regarding financial literacy. Instead, pep rallies are implemented into the curriculum to cultivate school pride which translates into national pride in adulthood.
The education system does an impressive job with teaching adolescents how to exhibit pride for their school. School spirit as seen on football fields and bleachers is a reflection of pride for the school and their ability to succeed in sports. This attitude transfers into a pride for one’s country as established through rallies and conferences held by government candidates. School spirit thus manifests as a precursor to developing national pride for one’s country as an adult. The pride is then maintained by holidays inserted in the calendar year to reflect the pride for the nation, for example, Canada Day. This demonstration of pride for one’s country promotes toxic behaviour by encouraging discrimination and hate towards those that do not belong or those who fail to prescribe to the national pride agenda. Those who choose not to engage with school pride, the same as national pride, face ostracization from the masses, thereby forcing them to engage in fear of discrimination from society.
The societal purpose of fabricating school pride in students is so that when they inevitably graduate they move on to developing national pride for their country. Therefore, upholding that the actual function of schooling is not to educate but to train students to be good citizens in modern day society by participating in the bureaucracy which we are taught to perceive as a democracy. The sense of identity established by school spirit then transfers onto identifying with the ideals of one nation. This attitude thus encourages xenophobic attitudes towards those who do not belong to or identify with the community shared by members of the country. Promoting school pride is problematic as it leads to national pride which can coincide with xenophobic attitudes that leads to a divide between those who belong in the community and outcasts.