We encounter ideologies through artifacts everyday in our lives whether we actively think about it or not. One of the most common artifacts that we see almost every day is the American flag.
The American flag symbolizes freedom, liberty, hope, etc. In grades K-12, we are required to say the Pledge of Allegiance every single day in before class. This seems like a very normal commonplace idea to us, but most other countries never do this and would consider that to be very weird. By saying the Pledge of Allegiance every day at school, we were constantly instilling patriotism and nationalism within ourselves and every other citizen.
Most people don’t even think about the words that they are saying in the pledge because they are so ingrained into our brains even from a young age. But, if you listen to the words we are constantly hailing America as the best, and literally pledging your allegiance to it every single day. Also, every classroom that I went into K-12 had an American flag in it as if they needed to remind us what country we were in.
Another thing that was in every classroom of mine was a cross because it was a Catholic school. I thought this was perfectly normal because I had gone to private Catholic schools my whole life, so it was a total culture shock to me when we didn’t pray or say the Pledge of Allegiance before my first class at Penn State. I didn’t mind saying the pledge every day or praying before class, but that was because that’s what everyone I knew did every day.
I’m definitely happy about that because they were always shoving those two things down our throats by making us pray and say the pledge everyday and I didn’t even realize it until now that I’m at a state college.