More flag silliness. Former prosecutor blamed for others’ acts while honoring a former president.
I didn’t say you, individually, said this. I just have been piled on often enough on this board for daring to criticse the US that I’m fed up with it. That is not a statement against a specific poster, but a general trend.
Yeah. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with the pledge, it’s any criticism that’s weird. QED.
If you don’t see that educational objectives like singing or reading aloud, and settling down, can be achieved without overt patriotism, then I can’t help you, but you rather prove how deep this brainwashing goes.
As for “purpose worthy of official rites” - your schools obviously have very different objectives than ours, whose purpose is education and not rites. We don’t have official announcements, pledges, patriotic songs. We used to have christian prayers in primary school in the 70s, but as far as I (no children of my own) have seen from the outside, most teachers stopped doing this, partly because more non-christian kids are in schools and people are getting more sensitive about them.
A pledge usually means something more than some words droned on, otherwise, why bother taking a pledge in the first place? It’s similar to a promise in that regard; although an oath is more binding legally (and morally), a promise is stronger than just a word given casually.
So either the pledge means something - then children should know what they are saying and why and be old enough to given meaningful consent; or it doesn’t mean anything (which goes against common understanding of the word pledge) - then why bother?