I've never had much use for school pride. Perhaps it's was my non-athletic upbringing, perhaps it was transferring to a different high school for PLTW, or perhaps it was simple disillusionment that prevented me from taking any pride in educational institutions.
An interesting thought that occurred to me in the sleep-deprived hours of the last few days was that school pride is essentially a form of civic nationalism. Schools can't behave in a militarist or imperialist manner, given their nature as public institutions, often with delineated geographic hegemony. Even on a highly competitive market, the vying for students and public-relations machinations would hardly count as real battle--though more on that later.
Yet the attitude promoted by school administrations is decidedly nationalistic. I think this fits the bill of civic nationalism, encouraging students to join together as a community. There's no real way to ensure that they adopt this approach--you cannot force a mind--but most students are perfectly happy to play along.
As an individualist, this attitude bothers me. First of all, it is rarely used to genuinely improve an institution. In education, no changes to the teaching system are ever effected through school pride. All reform is channeled through the conduits laid out by the administration (which, incidentally, never puts the faculty's neck on the line). Moreover, school pride is usually most prevalent in the context of athletic competitions, which in truth have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of imparting knowledge.
This model breeds docility, though, which is what really bothers me. Civic nationalism is easily translated into militarist nationalism--remember those athletic competitions? They desensitize children to physical, even violent, conflicts: the perfect training for imperialist war abroad and the police state at home. As others have commented, it really is amazing that we haven't become a dictatorship by now.
In a more immediate sense, civic nationalism lets us overlook our own problems. It's easy to forget your own failings when harping on the inferiority of others. If we want to see real social progress, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as a society. and embrace the reality that we're individuals, each pursuing perfection in our own way.
