What purpose does dressing up as a hip-hop artist or a cowboy achieve?

Distracting people from classes? Creating some what of a havoc around school? Drawing unnecessary stereotypes and attention?

Raising spirit in a school is not going to translates into the real world as nationalism. Attempt doing the same things in the time of a war and raising spirits. It is highly unlikely a war-stricken country will unite and overcome a power struggle by dressing up and cheering.

Football games are common grounds for the sparking of school spirit. For those school spirit extremist’s, a football team more or less embodies not only the school but the town that the school the located in.

This leads into the idea of patriotism. At the end of these games you often hear students saying “We beat Millbrae,” instead of saying “We beat Mills high school.” For those highly patriotic school-spiriteers, nothing separates the 40 students on the field in school colors from representing the entire town of Millbrae itself. The players simply are the city.

This directly goes into later life when these school-spiriteers grow up and look at their country. It will always be an “our side” versus “their side” conflict. In the end this patriotism is just a preset that later on leads a generation into divide.

People are following in the footsteps of a tradition set up so that you just root for “your” team. There is no sense of turning around to take a look at what is really going on. Similar to the blind following nationalists do.

Individuals should not have to build their spirit off of the glory of a school but rather on expressing themselves. But school-spiriteers insist on placing the responsibility for their immediate happiness on abstractions, on circumstances beyond their control.

Going on in life, principals are replaced by presidents and administration is replaced with congressional leaders  When Boards of Regents and the Legislature are figuring out a way to exchange quality of education for “economic development” and “national security,” students will no longer have time to cheer.

What happens when their entire life they have just revolved around the fact that either they will be the ones cheering or they will be cheered on, then what?

People will just be blindly following because of the trained from an early age in conforming with nationalism.

Don’t accept school spirit just simply for traditions sake.