I recently attempted to teach my 8-10 year-old Cub Scouts about the elements of the Australian national flag. I say attempt as anyone who's tried to maintain an 8 year-old's attention for any length of time on a topic other than Fortnite knows that 3 minutes is about as long as you get before restlessness gets the better of them, but we got there in the end. Of course as part of this we discussed the "Union Flag that lies in the canton position of the Australian flag to represent our British settlement and the Queen of England being our head of state. It is often called the Union Jack but should only properly be called this when flown on a sea-going vessel." A chill rippled around the group as another adult held up their hand before suggesting that my interpretation was incorrect. The posited that the term 'Union Jack' was appropriate for general use and wondered how I thought I knew the aforementioned factoid anyway. So I stopped to think... and realised that I had been taught this 'fact' as a Cub Scout myself, 21-odd years ago. I also realised, to my shame, that In my over two decades in the Movement I'd never sought to clarify the truth of this claim, and had taught it to countless Cub Scouts as a Leader myself with the same unquestioning belief with which I had received this 'knowledge' in the first place. Realising this I thought better of defending my belief and took and raincheck with the Cubs to investigate. The most helpful and instructive part of this investigation included asking the online Scouting community. It seems that many had the same understanding as I but once authoritative sources such as the BBC, Australia's Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the United Kingdom's Flag Institute itself were uncovered the answer became clear. It appears that I was living (and promulgating further) a lie for 21 years and that the terms 'Union Jack' and 'Union Flag' both correctly refer to the same device, however, when flown from a naval vessel it may only be correct to use the term 'Union Jack'. But perhaps a more important question quite rightly raised by many commentators on my above Scouts Australia Facebook group post) was why? More specifically, why agonise pedantly over the specific and correct name of another country's flag with 8-10 year-olds, who are liable to forget what you spoke about mere minutes later? The glib answer is because Bronze Boomerang badge test 6.1 asks the Cub to "Show you know the composition of the Australian Flag" but even then you could legitimately say that this particular knowledge is beyond that expected of an 8 year-old. I think the answer lies in the example of process rather than the knowledge outcome in this case. When I go back next week and tell my Cubs the outcome of my research, instead of meekly imbibing the received truth of the term 'Union Jack' only referring to that flag when flown on a naval vessel they will have seen an adult realise they were wrong, admit it, and then correct their own and their charges' understanding. They will also then have an understanding that the relatively recent idea of making this sea/land distinction stems from the same place that all word-reclamation, conspiracy theorising, grammar nazism, and liberal pedantry does, an attempt at reverse class-war snobbery by a group with presumed special knowledge who seek to differentiate (and in so doing elevate) themselves above their peers - though obviously not in those words. Perhaps I was even guilty of this myself. And what's the point of that you ask? They still only know some esoteric fact about an old flag. Well to that I answer the most important point of all. Having been engaged in this process with us, when the Cubs are faced in the future with an untruth of very real consequence e.g. "All vaccines cause autism" I hope they will not accept this glibly as my 8 year-old self once would have. Rather I hope they will investigate themselves and come to the conclusion that such an untruth originated with a now retracted and thoroughly discredited paper by one Andrew Wakefield that caused a large public response on initial publication and has been defended over the years by anti-vaccine activists, who most likely began as parents and relatives of those affected by autism, a condition with few known aetiological correlates, who now had a concrete scapegoat on which to direct their very real anger and frustration at modern medicine's failures to cure this debilitating condition, likely proliferated by conspiracy theorists concerned that 'Big Pharma' was attempting to profit from poisoning our children (a not ungrounded fear given instances of it in the past), and now mostly championed by 'Big Natural' hoping to dissaude would-be vaccine-users and instead channel them into the burgeoning supplement industry, themselves shown to in general be ineffective despite robust consumption, though often quite lucrative financially for marketers. Ok, maybe that's a bit of a stretch. But if this teaches them the potential value of critical thinking or at least shows them an example of it then I'll have considered it time well spent. And at very least we've all learned something new about an old flag.
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