I Pledge Allegiance to the Divided States of Spain

The past week I've been giving talks on the American High School. After being at a Spanish high school for about a month, I can say the differences are quite telling.

(Pre-World War II students do the Bellamy salute after the Pledge of Allegiance. I wonder why no one does the good-old Bellamy salute anymore...;-)

The mornings are especially different. No homerooms. Each classroom has its own tutors, which would be sort of their version of a homeroom teacher. This tutor, usually any teacher assigned a classroom, takes care of giving that classroom its announcements or handling administrative matters with the students. But these issues are usually handled quickly in between classes or at the beginning of the school day.

Now here's a big difference--a student will stay in one classroom for the whole school day (with breaks for lunch and recess). That means that its not the students who migrate every period from one classroom to the next--it's the teachers, to their often great dissatisfaction. When I tell them that in the States teachers usually have their own rooms, which they can decorate to their own liking, a sharp "really!" is followed by general words of regret bemoaning the state of things. This means that classrooms are comparatively more bare and less decorated than in the American classroom. This also means that its usually the teacher that is late. Understandibly, of course, knowing he has to carry paperwork, perhaps a CD player or other school materials

So the school is organized into different grades (from 1st to 4th) and these grades are then divided as well (A, B, C, D). So one period I'll have to find room 3D (third here students, D section), and the next period I'll go to 1C. There are no lockers, because the students keep everything in their desk. And although there's a bell, it usually does not ring.; teachers have to make sure they keep an eye on the clock during prep-periods. There's one advantage to this system--keeping students in class after the period is over is a punishment that works alot better.

Let's look a little closer still. The day begins, and unlike American schools there are no loudspeakers, which means no official announcments. Look around a Spanish high school. Something's missing--no Spanish flag. Students do not take any pledges in high school. The fact that American students have to rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day is strange and ridiculous to most Spaniards. This points to something ingrained in the Spanish character: its divisiveness. One of my fellow cooperating teachers told me that a Spanish teacher who puts a pin of the Spanish flag on her clothes could get labeled a rightest conservative, or even a fascist. There are many flags in Spain, and unlike our state flags these symbols carry deeply-rooted, nationalistc meanings.

(Respectively, a flag of Catalunya and the flag of the Basques)

The name we give to the "official" language of Spain, Spanish, is a name not easily recognized by most Spaniards. The name might make them uncomfortable. They call it "Castellano," which situates it historically and geographically in the center of Spain, where the Kingdom of Castile spread the language many years ago. There are three home-grown languages in Spain other than Castellano, each with their own heavy nationalistic baggage: Euskara (the language spoken in the Basque country), Galego (spoken in Galicia) and Catalan (spoken in Catalunya). These are bona fide languages, mind you, not merely dialects. On top of this language stew, you have dialects of Castellano spoken throughout Spain. For instance, native Spaniards teaching at my school often joke about the difficulty in understanding the accent of speakers from Andalucia.

There's also some recent history that darkly shades the divisive nationalism. Under the 36 year regime (1939-1975) of dictator-general Francico Franco, languages like Catalan and Euskara were outlawed. All of Spain had to come under the rule of Spanish and the center of Spain which it represented. After the fall of the regime and the start of the democratic-republic, the repressed languages and nationalities came back to reassert themselves. Today, one of the hot-button political topics in Spain is the teaching of languages like Catalan, Galego and Euskara in public schools. They each soon became the official languages taught at the school in their respective regions. Many parents and politicians protest that their kids come out of public schools barely knowing Castellano.

So that leads us back the United States. During my talk on the American high school the teacher would interupt me to say, "See class. Do you see how Americans are so patriotic and how much they love their country. Don't find it odd that they salute the flag. They feel proud of their flag." She would do an aside and say, "But in here it means nothing." She would say this with such bitterness that it hits me, and I suddenly feel just how sensitive the issue of nationalism and patriotism is in Spain. There's also the mixture of pride and self-consciousness that comes with knowing that Americans and the United States have become the shining example of patriotism.

I do love my country. I think patriotism is an essencial, important value. But our patriotism was grown out of a very different history than that of Spain, forged as it is by the mottos like e pluribus unum and novus ordo seclorum. I still don't know of a country as strangely diverse as Spain, diverse in a way different from our so called melting pot. Even though it will give politicians, nationalist and even parents a world of headaches, Spain's divisiveness, which can be colorful and profoundly fruitful, is just one of the reasons I'm enchanted by this country.