I’m going to have to call “cite” on the core of that. People rarely dropped out of school in the 50s versus now? Maybe, but I’m dubious of the claim and I’d like to see the data. The increase in drop-outs is attributable to a decrease in school prayer? That’s incredible; is there any evidence to support such an assertion?
At any rate, entering the 50s, the Pledge made no mention of God; those words were only added a little later on.
Share of US residents with High School education or more:
1960 41.1
1970 52.3
1980 66.5
1990 77.6
2000 84.1
2006 85.5
I suspect that more people dropped out of high school in the 1950s. Maybe the prayer drove them out. 
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/educational_attainment.html
Agreed. Whatever allegiance I might have is reserved for God.
North Carolina requires teachers to lead students in the pledge every day. I read the statute when I became a teacher, looking for loopholes.
The loopholes are clearly there for the kids: no student is required to say the pledge. Teachers, however, have no loopholes: you can’t claim a religious exemption (for example) to leading the pledge if you’re a teacher.
When I do it with my students, I’m very careful to talk every time about their right not to say it, and how they may exercise that right respectfully; I use it as an occasion to tell them about freedom of speech.
Daniel
I swear, by my life and my love for it, that I will never live for the sake of another person, nor will I ask another person to live for mine.
Yeah, right. She couldn’t do it herself.
I didn’t say to pledge allegiance to the BoR; I said to the principles enumerated therein. I wanted to especially highlight the importance of civil liberties.
My way doesn’t completely satisfy me, either, but I prefer it to worshipping a cloth.
Surely you are not pledging allegiance to a piece of cloth but to what that piece of cloth represents, The United States of America
Thirty-one percent of students who enter high school do not graduate, as of 2006.
The percentage of students graduating must have reached a peak during the late twentieth century and then started to decline.
Slight hijack:
Do other countries have pledges such as this?
Don’t think they should be.
And I’m usually pretty up on this type of issue.
You’re in Chicago, right?
In fact, since last fall students in IL are now required to do that stupid moment of prayer/silence/reflection/time wasting - except for (IIRC) Buffalo Grove where Robert Sherman’s daughter filed suit and got (IIRC) a TRO.
That’s “31 percent of American students were dropping out or failing to graduate** in the nation’s largest 100 public school districts.**” So the 85.5% high school education or higher may still be correct, it’s just some schools have really awful rates.
I don’t like the PoA recited daily in schools. You might say, “Anybody can opt out,” but face it, when you’re 5 years old, everything the teacher says is mandatory. Families who take that “no graven images” stuff seriously find their children pledging allegiance to one every morning. Atheist families find their children herded into saying “under God” daily. It is plainly a governmental body respecting a particular religion, in violation of the First Amendment.
Besides, when you have a child growing up with this oath of allegiance to a pretty banner every school day, he’s likely to grow up thinking the flag is sacred. As evidence, I point to all the attempts to amend to US and state constitutions to ward off “desecration” of the Flag. Only sacred things can be desecrated. You can shred, burn, or piss on the flag, but desecrating it is impossible. It is special, but it isn’t sacred.
FoieGrasIsEvil brought “God out of the schools” into the mix. I’d like to point out that daily prayer was not as universal before the “prayer ban” as some would like you to believe. I started kindergarten in 1954 in public schools, and I don’t recall ever starting the school day with a prayer. Even when I attended a Methodist University (private), no class started out with a prayer. The chapel was always open, for those who felt the need, but it wasn’t mandatory, like at some colleges.
I’m actually in a suburb…they do all kinds of crazy things here. For a time they were doing a “pledge to mother earth” after the Pledge of Allegiance, so I’m not surprised when I hear they are doing stuff out of the mainstream.
Pledging allegiance and worshipping are two vastly different things.
Some people really need to read a dictionary.
When a public school has you pledge allegience (loyalty, fealty, alliance, duty) to a nation under God, and you’re an atheist, the government is stomping on your theological belief.
If you are seriously devoted to not making graven images and to not swearing oaths to anything, an enforced pledge enforces a religion contrary to your own.
Some people really need to read the constitution. BwanaBob, I normally wouldn’t echo your snarky form, but I’m peeved these days that some folks don’t understand separation of church and state.
She did.
I have consulted the definition of ‘allegiance’ many times. It has the same root as ‘liege’ as in ‘liege lord’ and all that sort of medieval stuff.
To be a Christian is to already have a Lord, to whom one has committed one’s very being. It makes ‘allegiance’ look small by comparison. There’s no room left over for allegiance to any lesser lords, or to later inheritors to the debt of loyalty and service that once were pledged to lords.
Also, it was easier to make a living without a high school diploma back then. Now, you practically have to have a bachelor’s degree to flip burgers…
Actually, the conjunction in the PoA is ‘and’ rather than ‘but.’ So one is pledging one’s allegiance both “to the flag of the United States of America,” and “to the Republic for which it stands.”
As for the OP, I’m all for deep-sixing the PoA altogether.
If one must keep it, let’s get it out of the schools, fercryinoutloud. If such a pledge has any real meaning, it’s not the sort of thing a child should be asked to say: what does a child know about allegiances and pledges and conflicting loyalties?
We almost never expect adults to say words such as these - I’ve almost never encountered the PoA being said since I graduated from high school. It’s just a piece of nationalistic BS we inflict on kids who are poorly situated to formulate objections, let alone stand up for them.
If I had a school-age child, I wouldn’t want him to be expected to say the Pledge, because I think it would be unreasonable for him to have to say such things. And I think it would be unfair to the kid to expect him to behave in an exceptional manner (by keeping his mouth shut while the rest of the class is reciting the Pledge) in order to be true to his parent’s worldview. But the communal recitation of the PoA leaves no third option.
You combined two different complaints.
The very religious person has no problem with a nation under God. But they see the flag as an idol. That’s where I call bs. Pledging allegiance is not worship using any definition of worship that I understand or consider standard.
Of course an atheist has problems with under God but that’s not what I was talking about.