You asked, in another post, above,"
"Nal0whs..., how do you inspire national pride and encourage self-pride in a people? Does it start at home where it should? Should there be more organizations that push education in a more bold way? I await your insight.
In the US, where you and I were educated, we are drilled constantly with national pride. Our school day begins with a Pledge of Allegiance. We are told from the time we are little children to young adulthood, that the US is a land of heros: Washington, Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, Stonewall Jackson, Daniel Boon, Davy Crocket, and that list just grows and grows, fed by military exploits (whether justified or not) that kept providing more heros.
In school we learn about good government; things like petition and recall. Democracy. We are drilled about caring for the FLAG, its proper use and display.
Back about twenty years ago, the Dominican Department of Education
removed the Civics class from the grammar school curriculum!!!!!! Yes they did.
And, as you read Dominican text books, there seems to be a marked lack of anything we would call heros. Duarte? An intellectual leader, an inspiring leader, for sure. But heroic? Hardly. S?nchez and Mella seem puny. Santana is more of an ogre/conman/cattle baron type, hardly something for you to model your behaviour after. Who else? Lil?s? I like the guy, historically speaking. He had balls, for sure, but I don't think you would like your kids to grow up and be like "Lil?s" >>> There is not one "I cannot tell a lie" figure in all of Dominican History. I think it weighs on the national concience..
Then we have the communist-intellectuals that think by destroying the DR and combining it with Haiti they will be doing something "to save the masses"
This group included many influencial poets and writer over the past 40 years, and that old leninist addage, "if you tell a lie often enough times, a goodly percentage of the population will believe it" seems to have take some root.
So where can Dominican pride come from? From baseball players?, NBA draft choices?, an NFL first round draft choice? (He would be my choice!! Economics
graduate from Northwestern, no slouch!!).
Personally, I share your concerns and find that Dominicans take pride in small things: children, a safe landing in an airplane; a relative that got a visa, a birth or a wedding, but it seldom extends beyond that sphere.
EXCEPT if you suggest what to you seems a better way of doing something. Then you get the "We are in the Dominican Republic and we do it
this way!!"
Then they get very, very touchy...I have always thought it might have to do with a small national inferiority complex, such as occurs when you are asked your nationality and you respond "American" , they will say "We are all Americans" ...The dialogue can get long and heated.
HB