Yeah, I’m one of the ones who got in trouble because I stopped standing up or reciting the pledge when I was in ninth grade. I was informed by the principal that I had to stand but did not have to recite it.
I always thought that, seeing as how I was in a social studies class, it would have been a great idea for the class to discuss the pledge of allegiance and what it meant, etc. Silly me… why would we do something like that in a U.S. junior high classroom?
Siege How were you in the first grade at 4 years old?
Agreed. There shouldn’t be a penalty for abstaining. There’s something ironic about being forced to say, “…with liberty and justice for all.”
It’s also ironic that the two most divisive words appear immediately before the word “indivisible.”
No, if you don’t like your kids saying the Pledge of Allegiance you can be like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and ask your teacher to excuse your kid. As for the oath I say it everyday in school and I take it seriously.
It could be bad math. I was 17 when I graduated, so I’m willing to be corrected.
Usually you start First Grade at 6 possibly 5 but usually 5 year olds are held back a year in order to put them in at 6.
What do the parents have to do with it? Why should you need a religious reason to abstain from it?
How seriously can you take the pledge if you believe in forcing it on children.
Either you believe in, “With liberty and justice for all.” or you don’t, it is neither liberty nor particularly just to force someone to make a loyalty oath. Are the kids free or are they not?
As I’ve said you can excuse your child not just for religious reasons but any sort of reasons.
Flag worship is so perverse. I know it’s supposed to be better than King and Queen worship, but it seems identical. I am not loyal to a symbol. The symbol is not the country. I am loyal to the country.
I don’t think children should be forced, or even just asked to make an oath of any kind. After all, we don’t hold them to be mature enough to make all sorts of important decisions; why should they be considered old enough to commit to loyalty to a country?
Yes, exactly. You said what I am free to do. You didn’t say anything about what my child is free to do. If you aren’t old enough to make the decision, you’re not old enough to say the loyalty oath.
Your kid has the perfect freedom to sit down during the Pledge and not be given a detention by a teacher.
I’m not American, but I have come to understand from reading the postings that the Pledge of Allegience is recited daily by schoolchildren.
Some thoughts on this:
Why only schoolchildren? Are adults supposed to be more/less loyal?
Why every day? Doesn’t this devalue its meaning? Surely it should be on special occasions only?
I find ‘One nation under God’ to be contradictory. ‘One nation’, by all means. But people worship different deities, or deny that the god of Islam is the same as the God of Israel, or the Christian god… or are agnostic or atheist. A dichotomy here.
I honestly have never met people more outspoken about the patriotism than Americans - sometimes, dare I say, excessively so. So what it the point of this daily ritual of patriotism?
If it were to have impact, I would suggest that it be used on first and last days of term. Or on a special occasion best chosen by Americans.
And quietly drop the god bit. It excludes some.
Well, there’s a long history about why we do it in public schools here. It’s an online reproduction of a chapter from a full book. The link at the top will provide you with a table of contents, including all the online excerpts.
The section on the Flag Over the Schoolhouse campaign is particularly interesting.
‘One nation under God’
So is it not immoral, as the US is under the Lord God almighty, maker of heaven and earth. As such the pledge is a pledge of faith in God that even though the nation may become totally evil God will turn that to the good.
It is a statement of faith in God over the efforts of man IMHO.
Thank God that there is a God
Surely that depends on the speaker? I mean, I could recite the pledge of allegiance, but coming from me it would be simply that, a recitation. One of my problems with the pledge is the idea that you can’t force respect; that making someone repeat something doesn’t mean they believe it, and often to the contrary actually attempting to get people to respect something against their will may make them less well disposed to you. And voluntarily speaking, it’s only a statement of faith if people already believe it to be - in which case it is pointless, because such people will likely make such a statement of their own conception at some point. I would imagine that if you, for example, had never heard of the pledge, you would have made such a pledge of your own creation anyway.
Of course, that claim just assumes there is a God, and that God is good, and that believing in one is good. From my viewpoint on the other hand, it’s not much different than ending the pledge with “Under Hitler” or “crush the unbelievers!” Since God as typically portrayed is evil ( worse than Hitler or any real world tyrant, by far ), and “under God” is a hostile statement to anyone who doesn’t want to live in a Christian theocracy.
Thank goodness that there isn’t one. Without God there is hope; with God there is none. I have no desire to exist as the immortal victim of an invincible evil superbeing.
When the Supreme Court someday considers whether the pledge with “under God” and our “In God We Trust” national motto are constitutional, I hope that you’ll be there to argue in favor of keeping them. That would certainly help dispel the silly idea that the words are simply “ceremonial deism” and don’t actually mean to refer to an actual deity.
Once the SC admits that these really are theistic, they’ll be forced to rule them unconstitutional. The only way they hang on now is that the SC views them as empty ceremonial words.