London teachers on alert for morally ambiguous patriotic sentiments.

From a report published by Michael Hand and Jo Pearce from the Institute of Education at the University of London:

"Patriotism is love of one's country, but are countries really appropriate objects of love?
"Loving things can be bad for us, for example when the things we love are morally corrupt.
"Since all national histories are at best morally ambiguous, it's an open question whether citizens should love their countries."

Are countries appropriate objects of love?
What a silly question.
Now, if they’d asked: "are countries appropriate object of no-questions-asked love", then perhaps, just maybe, they might have had a point.

It is as natural and as honourable to love your country, your birth-place, as it is to love your parents. Of course, it isn’t (and they aren’t) perfect; it and they do things which they shouldn’t, but the inconvenient fact remains that there is a indefinable, but perfectly acceptable, bond of loving attachment between you and your family, you and your country.

Other findings?

.9% of teachers think schools should teach patriotism.
.75% of the teachers felt they had an "obligation to alert their pupils to the dangers of patriotic sentiments".
."Almost" all the teachers questioned felt that they should present "a balanced set of views on patriotism, while nearly half said schools should remain "strictly neutral" on the issue."

But it was hardly a very representative or diverse subsection of the British education system delivering these answers:

The researchers questioned more than 300 teachers in London secondary schools and pupils aged 13-14.

Despite what Londoners sometimes presume, the terms "London" and the "United Kingdom" are not one and the same; I'd be interested to see what the findings of a UK-wide survey would deliver on this question