How should patriotism be handled in schools? We argue that schools cannot afford to ignore the topic, but nor are they justified in either promoting or discouraging patriotic feeling in students. The only defensible policy is for schools to adopt a stance of neutrality and teach the topic as a controversial issue. We go on to show that there is general support among British teachers and students for school neutrality on patriotism and that the currently preferred classroom practice is to address patriotic ideas in the context of open discussion. We conclude with some discussion of the extensive and often hostile coverage of our research in the British press.

Because there are good arguments both for and against loving one's country, patriotism should be taught as a controversial issue in schools. But is this pedagogical approach practically viable in the British educational context? Here we report on a small-scale survey of teachers and students in secondary schools and show that their perspectives and practices are highly compatible with our recommended approach. ). This debate has a number of dimensions and permutations, but we believe that the crux of the matter is whether or not there are compelling reasons for citizens to love their countries. If there are, students can be presented with these reasons and encouraged to develop the appropriate attachment; if there are not, the desirability of patriotism is an open question and any attempt to foster it in schools is bound to be miseducational. In our judgement, the benefits of patriotic attachment, though not insignificant, are counterbalanced by equally significant drawbacks. The question of the desirability of patriotism is rationally unsettled, so the topic ought properly to be taught as a controversial issue. Students should be made aware of the principal arguments for and against patriotism and enabled to form their own considered judgements on the matter. We have elaborated and defended this view in detail elsewhere (Hand in press; Hand and Pearce 2009).For the purposes of this article, we take it as read that the right educational approach to patriotism is to teach it as a controversial issue. The question we explore here is whether this approach is practically viable in British schools, in the context of teachers' and students' perspectives on patriotism and how it should be handled in the classroom. We present the findings of a small-scale survey of teachers and students in secondary schools in south-east England and examine the ways in which their views and practices cohere or conflict with the policy of teaching patriotism as a controversial issue. We conclude with a set of practical recommendations for teaching in this area.