Sooner or later, anyone who lives abroad reaches a defining moment when the desire to understand and fit into the foreign culture hits a brick wall of absolute resistance. In my case, living in California, it came a few weeks ago at my son's elementary school open house. The first-grade classroom was transformed into a showcase of art projects, spelling bees, and mini-science workshops on the life cycle of insects. So far, so good. But then the children of Room 63 started to sing, and my internal refusal mechanism went haywire. In unison, they launched into "America, I Love You":

It's your land, it's my land,
A great do or die land,
And that's just why I sing:
America, I love you!
From all sorts of places,
They welcomed all the races
To settle on their shore.
They didn't care which one,
The poor or the rich one,
They still had room for more.
To give them protection
By popular election,
A set of laws they chose.
They're your laws and my laws,
For your cause and my cause.
That's why this country rose.

Granted, I'm not a big fan of patriotic sentiment in any context. But this got my goat in ways I just couldn't shake. First, there was the niggly matter of historical accuracy. (What are black, Asian or Native Americans supposed to make of that line about welcoming all the races?) One also had to question the dubious taste of singing about a "do or die land" in the wake of a controversial war in Iraq that many had passionately opposed. What really riled me, though, was that the song had absolutely nothing to do with education. What was it doing there? I might have understood better if my son's teacher was some raving flag-waving patriot, but she isn't. She and the other parents beamed proudly and generally acted as if the song were a normal part of the American school experience.

Which, as I quickly discovered, it is. Patriotic songs are sung up and down classrooms at Grant Elementary, just as they are at every other school in the land. Mostly, they go without challenge or critical examination. In third grade, for example, the daughter of a friend of mine merrily sang her way through "It's a Grand Old Flag," which includes the lines: "Every heart beats true/'neath the Red, White and Blue,/Where there's never a boast or brag." Her father gently asked her when they got home whether the whole song wasn't in fact a boast and a brag. His daughter went very quiet as she thought through the implications of his question. Challenging received wisdom in this way is something she never encounters in the classroom.

With my son's education at stake, I can't help but ponder the link between what is fed to children as young as six and what American adults end up understanding about the wider world. Children are recruited from the very start of their school careers to believe in Team America, whose oft-repeated mantra is: We're the good guys, we always strive to do the right thing, we live in the greatest country in the world.