It’s a popular way to for students to show pride during sporting events and rallies, but school and district officials are now warning students that the chants could appear inappropriate and intolerant. The chants are now causing chatter campus-wide after school staff brought up the topic to a leadership class.

Folsom Cordova Unified Communications Director Daniel Thigpen said, “To practice empathy, to practice kindness and to practice patriotism. You can do both.” …

The school’s principal sent out an email to families, Wednesday and relayed the same message to students over the school’s PA system, clarifying any confusion.

She told students and parents that sometimes “We can communicate an unintended message.” She also said USA chanting is welcome, but it may be best to do it at what she says are appropriate times, like following the national anthem or the Pledge of Allegiance. …

The district says there has never been a complaint about USA chants at the high school. Students say there’s likely to be a lot of chanting at this Friday’s football game, where the theme is USA pride.

I appreciate the Folsom Cordova Unified leadership class responding to complaints that nobody made because, you know, sometimes problems don’t present themselves so you have to seek them out. But like a lot of things in education right now, this one has me confused.

Things change. The line between what’s offensive and what’s not keeps getting erased and then redrawn someplace else. And on my lonely journey towards achieving perfection, I’m doing my damnedest to keep up. I truly am. But I just need whoever decided to go proactive on this particular non-problem to walk me through it.

Vista Del Lago High School is situated in the United States of America. Presumably, the U!S!A! chant stands for those words. The kids who go to that school are predominantly American citizens. The ones who don’t happen to be citizens live in Folsom after their families came here because to make a better life than they could have wherever they were. And the same can be said for all the other school systems they play against. So far, I’m keeping up. And this is all good.

So who exactly would be triggered by the chant? I’m being 100 percent serious. Who? Immigrants? I’d think immigrants would be the first ones to not only tolerate it, but embrace it. To be cheering the loudest. I mean, if things descended into chaos in the States (more than they already are) to the point I decided to take the ThornTones’ show on the road to say, Antwerp and all the kids broke out into a chant of Bel-gium! Bel-gium! at the school soccer game, I kind feel like I’d understand. In fact I’d join in the celebration of my adopted homeland.

The other part of this is that today’s high school kids are the least intolerant generation in American history. Maybe I’m being naive, but it strikes me that there has never been a better time to be a member of one of the groups that have been in school bullies’ crosshairs since the Pilgrims landed here. Gays. Minorities. ESL. Special needs. Low income kids. Kid who are into nerd culture. It’s not paradise because high school will always be a minefield. But it’s unquestionably gotten better with each generation and I think generally speaking they’re way too focused on sending/receiving boob pictures to practice the kind of widespread, institutional hatred their administrators are so worried about.

So I think is all on the adults. As usual. They’re so obsessed with protecting everybody from everything, their own paranoia is turning a simple patriotic unity cry that’s been accepted for decades and through hundreds of international competitions and are turning it into hate speech. Schools have a million things to worry about. U!S!A! isn’t one of them.

@jerrythornton1