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Well, elementary school and high school are different from a University. A university's mission is to train people to become literate, critical thinking, self-examining citizens. I don't mind that flags are in primary schools' classrooms.

I say there's not a bit of difference. Either we live in America or we don't. I have to go now but I thank you for willing to be able to take the heat here

Thanks for your comments about my "willingness to take the heat." I don't see it as heat. I see it as testing competing arguments.

Now let's take your argument that "We either live in America or we don't." By that token, everything in America should have a flag in it or on it. Bathrooms should have flags in them (especially if taxpayers paid for them), closets should have flags in them, garages should have flags in them. Maybe in your house this is fine.

So if you accept that maybe flags are more appropriate in some places than in others (which I think is reasonable given the ridiculous alternative), then the questions is simply one of where we draw the line. For example, I draw the line in the university classroom. I've explained why I draw that line many times.

Here's something to chew on. A lot of people say the university is public, but think about what that really means. You have a right to walk onto campus, to go into the student union, to protest in the desgnated free speech zones. But you don't have a right to walk into a class that's in session unless you're registered for it. In other words, suddenly the classroom is less than fully public, isn't it?

Now there are buildings on campus that are publically funded but are not at all "public." Even I can't get in them because they are high security buildings where military research is going on. So we must admit that the word "public" can mean a lot of different things in practice.

The classroom is perhaps a semi-public space. It is not a space for "anything goes" or "free assembly" or even for "free speech." The teacher sets the agenda in the classroom, and rightly so. The teacher represents the interests of his or her discipline and is trained to do so. Now my discipline is the study of culture, and I am highly trained to do it well. And as someone who does it well (very well) I can tell you straight out that a permanent flag in the classroom is not conducive to what I do.