There is a controversy in Woodbury, Vermont over whether or not school children should recite the Pledge of Allegiance in the classroom at the start of the school day. Read about it below.
Woodbury, Vermont is a town of 810 people who are at odds with one another over whether or not to reinstate the practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in classroom. It seems that the parents of the children attending the school want to have a recitation of the Pledge to be part of their childrens’ school day. However, school officials have blocked the efforts out of fear that children who don’t want to recite the Pledge will be made to feel out of step with their school mates for sitting out participating with the other children.
The officials at the school apparently felt they had the perfect answer to the problem. Instead of risking making non-participating children the objects of scorn, they would have the children who want to recite the Pledge of Allegiance leave the classroom and go up the stairs of the 18th century school house to a second floor gymnasium to recite the Pledge. Children would have the choice of being singled out, having to walk out of their class in front of everyone, walk upstairs to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or they can have play time while their peers are upstairs doing the Pledge.
The parents didn’t like this option and continued to insist that the children be allowed to stay in their classrooms, stand by their desks and recite the Pledge as has been the tradition for generations. The teachers and administration of the school scoffed at the idea. Then last week, instead of sending the children who chose to forgo playtime to do the Pledge, the school administrator herded all the students and faculty of the school (about 55 people) into a cramped for foyer so that the entire school would do the Pledge together.
Principal Michaela Martin seemed to be thumbing her nose at the parents by doing this, basically saying, ‘There, you happy now? Nana nana boo boo’. They weren’t and they aren’t.
The two sides are getting increasingly angry and the discussions more heated.
The school’s stance is that children who don’t want to recite the Pledge should not be put in a position of being singled out for scorn. The parent’s position is that the Pledge should be a part of the school day.
The Vermont Pledge of Allegiance controversy leaves me wondering if the school administrators at Woodbury Elementary School allow children to decide whether or not they take tests. A child might be made vulnerable to scorn form her classmates should she get a failing grade on a test or forget to do her homework? Are these things made optional for the children there?
Here’s the deal. This is the United States of America. Vermont is one of the United States. Therefore, it is expected that someone going to school in a Vermont town is a citizen of the United States of America. Considering all those factors, it is reasonable to expect that the citizens of Woodbury, Vermont would have an allegiance to the country in which they live. It is therefore reasonable for the children to learn the Pledge of Allegiance as part of their schooling. It is, after all, their country.
Am I the only person that is concerned that school teachers seem to be increasingly concerned about children having to accept consequences for their own actions? If you never fail anything, you don’t learn how to be a good sport when you lose. If you are told you are great at something when its obvious that you aren’t, it damages your self esteem. If you never have to work hard at anything, you don’t build self esteem and you don’t learn that things aren’t given to your for nothing. There are life lessons that our children are not learning. They can’t learn if they are never given the opportunity to fail at something. The will never learn the values we say we want to teach our children if they are never expected to participate in activities because its the right thing to do regardless of whether or not they WANT to.
There’s something to be said for old fashioned values. Many generations were raised on doing the ‘right thing’ regardless of consequences to yourself, on putting God and country first, on family values, on discipline and accepting hardship. Frankly, those generations were a lot better off than the more recent generations of narcissists who believe that the only thing to be ashamed of is losing and the end justifies any means.
Pledge of Allegiance – Video
Recited by John Wayne
November 16th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Well, let’s see. The pledge of allegiance is exactly 116 years old. The U.S. is 232 years old — exactly twice the age of the original version of the pledge.
Were all the Americans from the first 116 years of this country traitors for not pledging their allegiance to the flag?
When did the pledge become official? 1942, when the country was 166 years old. Only ONE YEAR later, the Supreme Court ruled that “compulsory unification of opinion” violated the First Amendment. In other words, you cannot be compelled to pledge your allegiance to the flag.
This is right and appropriate — especially for children. How can a young child possibly understand what it means to swear a commitment to a country? It is not appropriate to compel them to make promises about their future lives that they cannot yet understand. Further, why would you WANT to compel children to make such a pledge? Teach them about the country, about its ideals (exemplary!), and its history (not quite so good). When they get older, then they’ll be able to make informed decisions….
OK. Enough about the pledge itself.
This article is terrible journalism. The town of Woodbury — including the *parents* in Woodbury — is split about this issue. Over and over again, this article talks about “the parents” as if they were unified in their opinions (they most assuredly are not) and “the school” or “the officials at the school” as if they were unified in their opinions (I suspect they are not, either).
Obviously, a site with the name of “rightpundits.com” is going to be slanted to the right — fine. That doesn’t excuse poor journalism. Please give your readership all of the relevant facts, not just the few that support the bias of your editorship.
November 16th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
In 1943, with American armies and navies fighting and dying in Europe and the Pacific, the Supreme Court overturned its 3-year-old pledge decision in Minersville v. Gobitis – this time ruling in favor of another group of Jehovah Witnesses, though not on religious grounds.
The court´s decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (319 U.S. 624) said that any State making it compulsory for children in the public schools to salute the flag and pledge allegiance was violating the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution!
There were no protests, riots, or acts of violence after the ruling, and the decision has never been overturned. In fact, the majority opinion delivered by Justice Robert Jackson has become one of the great statements in American constitutional law and history. The following are excerpts:
“The State may require instruction and study of all in our history and in the structure and organization of our government, including the guaranties of civil liberty, which tend to inspire patriotism and love of country…
Here, however, we are dealing with a compulsion of students to declare a belief. There is no doubt that, in connection with the pledges, the flag salute is a form of utterance…
To sustain the compulsory flag salute we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual’s right to speak his own mind, left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind…
That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles…
One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.
National unity as an end which officials may foster by persuasion and example is not in question. The problem is whether under our Constitution compulsion as here employed is a permissible means for its achievement.
Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men…
Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.
the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.
The case is made difficult…because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization.
To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.”
November 16th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Don’t forget to include into this squabble the part about “Under God” which a lot of people who arent christian are not happy about…..
November 16th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Next town over:
” How can a young child possibly understand what it means to swear a commitment to a country?”
By teaching them first what a pledge/commitment is ?
True, the law does not commit anyone to recite the pledge. But it did give me a sense of patriotism while growing up. It drove me to ask the question “why am I saying these things”?
Those questions lead me to answers that taught me respect and gratitude for my country, something that is in short supply amongst our youth today.
I’m willing to bet more than anything that the mentioning of God has more to do with this than anyones rights or infringement upon.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
You are all missing the point. The pledge teaches childeren that they are more than just individuals with their own petty needs and wants and stars and failures, but that they are part of something larger than that as a group. I think its a healthy bit of teaching and fundamental to developing some national cohesiveness that in the end make us work better together as one nation. Forget the parent’s narcissism, its really good for the kids to pledge and to say a reasonable group prayer so they learn the world is about more than just them.
November 16th, 2008 at 6:40 pm
Exactly Brian – you said it better than I did in the article. But that was my point.
next town over – where did I say anything in the article about ‘Patriotism’ and even had I said that – since when did ‘Patriotism’ become a ‘bad word’.
This is about learning that you and I are not the center of the universe. There are things that matter that are bigger than our own petty wants.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:32 pm
Being cognizant of a group’s needs and not just being egotistical is a great value, but I don’t think reciting a pledge really fosters that. What kids today need is teachers and parents that model the right behavior. Instead, kids are taught to be smarter, better, faster, than their colleagues.
Other countries’ schools foster this group awareness much more than we do here. They do it at a child’s level, which is about as big as his or her classroom. Once this attitude is firmly established in a child, it can be expanded along with the child’s horizon.
Reciting a pledge to an entity you have yet to comprehend is akin to learning letters without knowing what they are used for. Sure, you might get it eventually, but how much better would it be if that kid actually *wanted* to learn letters because he or she already knew that letters and words convey meaning and that books are great things?
What I’d like to see is that the children choose themselves, at an age where they are capable of it, whether or not to recite the pledge. It would probably lead to some interesting discussions with the teacher. Even if there was a lot of dissent, I’d still prefer that over a lemming-like morning ritual with eye-rolling and bored voices. Do it right or don’t do it. Rehearsing every day isn’t going to change anyone’s true feelings.
November 16th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
Lilli, if adults cannot tell children to recite the pledge, how is it that we convince them to recite their multiplication tables? The essence of your flabbergasting argument is that children can never do what they cannot understand. Boy is that a recipe for an ignorant culture!
November 16th, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Not exactly. Not that they *can’t* do something, they certainly can, but it means a lot more to them when they do understand. You can probably teach a four year old to recite multiplication tables, but that child will still be lost if you ask it to apply that knowledge. You can recite Chinese too without understanding a single word.
To keep a child’s natural curiosity alive you don’t want to use drills that don’t make sense to him or her, but that’s just basic child psychology. A good teacher always tries to create a situation in which the child *wants to* find the solution, thereby learning the necessary steps.
Simply put, if I have to tell a child to recite anything, I obviously have done a poor job teaching him the value of it.
You wouldn’t “force” your child to say “I love you” just because it’s the right thing to say either.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:43 am
> Here’s the deal. This is the United States of America. Vermont is one of the United States. Therefore, it is expected that someone going to school in a Vermont town is a citizen of the United States of America. Considering all those factors, it is reasonable to expect that the citizens of Woodbury, Vermont would have an allegiance to the country in which they live. It is therefore reasonable for the children to learn the Pledge of Allegiance as part of their schooling. It is, after all, their country.
Um…no. It is the role of the schools, even the public ones, to educate, not to indoctrinate, propagandize, or otherwise try to foster loyalty/allegiance towards the country/government. The pledge of allegiance has nothing to do with education, and to suggest that it be mandatory for all students to recite it is just absurd. Schools are meant to be places of learning, not places for proselytizing government interests upon the students. Allegiance cannot be forced, or fostered through mundane repetition anyways. All the recitation does is pull time away from valid educational pursuits, which only helps our schools fall further and further behind their international counterparts.
November 17th, 2008 at 2:01 am
aroth – if you are so anti-government, then why would you vote for the party of big government?
November 17th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Lilli-Lisab your good examples of generation W saying “let the kid’s teach themselves!” Then why not eliminate all the adults in schools posing as teachers and just hire a sociologist to study them and a psychologist to assist them find themselves? When I was a kiddie we as a group thought the pledge of alligence was a natural type of daily filial meditation to a greater cause and it felt special. Same with a short prayer. One kid whose parents were devout atheists robbed him of joining in with the rest of us and I always thought he was being cheated and no we didn’t pick on him, but he was getting shortchanged by the adults. Its not lemming behavior to pledge the allegiance to your country or participate in a short prayer because no one is jumping off a cliff into the artic sea. Such dramatics!! Flawed logic too!!Children benifit from learning things both by rote recitation(like little copy cats, so obviously it has survival value) and by play and exploration and interaction. They need both. You can’t learn to solve algebra problems without learning your arithmatic and rules, then you can go onto unique problems and test out solutions by various inputs. Public schools job is to both indoctrinate for the state and teach some useful material focused around the three R’s as well as instill some self discipline so that sustained studies can be undertaken as well as obedience to authority. Yes, a certain amount of this is very helpful to a child to learn to participate in later life’s challenges. Its only when this blends over to be overly loyal to the state to the exclusion of the family or greedy consumerists and competitiors for more “things” or “positions of power” it becomes a problem, even cult like. We live in the cult of consumerism in our country right now. But this is the corporate infestation of our nest that has co-opted our citizenry for its own purposes in a most creepy manner. Still children do need some early copy cat-ing if they want to prepare for further studies. Kid’s teaching themselves is really a euphemism for play, and that is really meant for after school or in art, music, and gym class. Lets not take that away from them too in the name of willy nilly indulgence where they won’t learn some self discipline early in life. Its only when its overdone and stifles creativity for a droning 8 hours it becomes a problem. We have military schools for troubled totts already to provide that.
November 17th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Here’s the deal. This is the United States of America. Vermont is one of the United States. Therefore, it is expected that someone going to school in a Vermont town is a citizen of the United States of America. … It is, after all, their country.
This is demonstrably false; there are many intra-company transferees who have children who are not citizens who attend public schools.
The link to failure and acceptance of consequences is ludicrously strained.
Beth,
These days, there is no major party advocating small government.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Lilli;
” but that child will still be lost if you ask it to apply that knowledge. You can recite Chinese too without understanding a single word.:
How ridiculous.
The odds that an American child will run into a situtation having to decipher Cantonese is a lot less than having to know what the answer is to 4×4.
As a matter of fact its guaranteed that the child will run into a problem where the reciting of mutiplication tables comes in handy.
Citizen or not,
we should all give thanks and allegiance to country whos fruits we are willing to take advantage of.
In my family we all say thanks for the meal before and after we eat it, even if it wasnt one of the best ones we ever had.
We either thank God or the person who prepared it.
All the kids, my son, daughter, nephews and nieces seem to have no problem understanding this concept.
So lets put all this bullsh*t of handling our kids with kidskin gloves aside and give them a little credit.
Sam.
Small govt. is exactly what the conservative/republican party advocates.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Aroth;
“Schools are meant to be places of learning, not places for proselytizing government interests upon the students.”
Would you care to see the list of interests and proselytizing by govt. that takes place in public schools ?
For starters, hows about dragging their poor little butts to see a gay wedding ?
November 17th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Brian, without getting too tangled up in teaching philosophies at this point, let’s just leave it at that, that children – and adults – learn things much faster and with more enthusiasm when they know the reasons for it. That doesn’t mean no authority, that doesn’t mean it’s a free for all. Educated teachers are needed to create an environment that is conducive to learning and to set up interesting challenges that can be explored.
Learning *is* play. The longer that attitude can be kept up, the more motivated the students will be. Even play has rules and the children have to follow them or face the consequences. Again, it’s up to the teachers to model appropriate behavior, including gratitude to family, school, country, or whatever.
While I don’t agree with the notion that memorizing tables is necessary to know math I do want to point out that math is pretty factual. Feelings are not. Reciting a pledge is not going to *make* anyone more or less proud of their country. Thanking God or mom or dad for dinner isn’t going to *make* anyone more thankful. That is why I am all for introducing these rituals of appreciation but not before the child is capable of truly “meaning” them.
November 17th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Kids a at a certain age need to be guided as to what is considered an important learning skill.
If I remember correctly it didnt seem like anything the school had to offer was of any use when I was at the same age the kids mentioned are.
Really, if you are going to wait for the enthusiam to come about you will be stuck with nothing more than a bunch of 18 year old 2nd graders.
Lilli;
“Again, it’s up to the teachers to model appropriate behavior, including gratitude to family, school, country, or whatever.”
You make my point for me.
If the teacher recites along with the kids then she is setting the example you say is needed.
Although I belive most of the qualities you mention, gratitude to family etc, are the responsabilty of parents and not teachers whos main purpose is to teach.
As parents I would instruct my child that the minute they spend every day is the least they could do to show some gratitude.
If you think our kids wont eventually get it you are seriously underestimating them.
I was raised to recite the pledge as far back as the 60s, it didnt take long for me to understand it, there was no opting out and those who did not relate to the purpose did not turn out any worse or better.
We said it, bla bla bla and then went on with our day. It brought me to eventually have a sense of pride in my country
With all the crap that public schools cram into our kids heads today this pledge is truly the least of their/our problems and can only foster a sense of belonging and patriotism.
Whats wrong with that ?
November 17th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
> aroth – if you are so anti-government, then why would you vote for the party of big government?
Assuming you’re referring to the democratic party there, then because it was the lesser of two evils. If you look at the results of the past 8 years, in which the Republicans largely had control of the government, it’s very hard to assert that the Republican party is the party of “smaller government” anymore. Bush expanded the powers of the Federal government immensely, and granted it the ability to do all sorts of unsavory things like warrantless domestic spying, and spent tons of money on things like an unjustified war in Iraq, and pretty much ran our economy into the ground.
So the way I see it, *neither* major party represents smaller government anymore, and while I agree with the Republican party’s principles of smaller government and lower taxes, I’m not foolish enough to believe that they would actually deliver that. They had 8 years in which they could have done so, and yet they failed to even make progress towards shrinking the government. All they did was grow it, and in some fairly disturbing ways.
At the same time, while I want government to be as small and unobtrusive as possible, I also tend to side with the Democratic party on social issues. Or more accurately, I believe that the government should not be sticking its now into social issues in the first place, and ironically, the Democratic party seems more likely to deliver this than the Republican party. I think this points out a fundamental flaw in the Republican platform – its social agenda is completely at odds with the idea of shrinking government. The Republican social agenda wants to have the government intervening/creating laws on issues like abortion, gay marriage, assisted suicide, and the like. That makes the government bigger, not smaller.
Hell, even the original post here shows this disparity. You say you want the schools to basically be instilling pro-country values into students, and argue that they almost have an obligation to do so, owing to the fact that the schools are on American soil, and teaching American students. However, asserting that schools should be instilling such values isn’t a reduction of government, it’s an expansion of its scope and influence. That is at odds with your idea that the Republican party represents smaller government. I’m all for smaller government, but that just isn’t what your party is offering anymore. And while we’re on the subject of values, I don’t believe that it is the role of the schools to be teaching *any* sort of values. They should be teaching skills, and knowledge (and ideally, they should be teaching critical thinking and reasoning skills, so that the students come out of the process capable of thinking rationally, and choosing their own values as individuals). If values are to be taught, then they should be taught by the *parents*, not the public school system.
So anyways, back on topic, in my opinion neither party would have done anything to reduce the scope of government, so I voted Democratic, because at least their social platform is built upon the idea of giving people more right, not taking them away. The government would have expanded no matter who won, but at least with the Deomcrats, it won’t expand in a way that continues to erode our social liberties. If there were a (viable) party that truly wanted to shrink the government, I would gladly give them my vote. But such a party doesn’t exist right now. The closest thing to that would be the libertarian party, but they fail miserably at the “viability” requirement.
>Would you care to see the list of interests and proselytizing by govt. that takes place in public schools ?
I’m not denying that it happens, but just because it happens, that doesn’t mean that it *should* happen. And it certainly doesn’t mean that it should therefore become a mandatory part of the cirriculum. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
> For starters, hows about dragging their poor little butts to see a gay wedding ?
Your analogy is faulty. How about if they got dragged off to witness a gay wedding every single day? And how about if this was a required part of the cirriculum, and not an optional addition that required explicit parental consent? That would be a more accurate parallel to having mandatory daily recitations of the pledge of allegiance.
November 17th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
“Your analogy is faulty. How about if they got dragged off to witness a gay wedding every single day? And how about if this was a required part of the cirriculum, and not an optional addition that required explicit parental consent? That would be a more accurate parallel to having mandatory daily recitations of the pledge of allegiance.”
One minute a day of pledging allieance to your country is a far cry from an outing that may well take a whole day, not to mention the many other forms of indoctrination we see in such acts as having unwitting 2nd and 3rd graders singing songs of praise for Obama,teachers who go on anti Bush rants, professors pushing liberal agendas,or a public school being used to promote Obama to the students where the teacher involved made a video that made the students look like a “Hitler Youth” movement wearing quasi military clothing. The teacher was suspended but not for turning his students into robots that support Obama, he was suspended because he made his actions public.
Or how about literature explaing same sex parents ?
Or how about our schools minimizing the efforts of our country aginst radical Islam ?
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.aspx?GUID={1C21E32E-6A9D-4B06-810A-46AA3BC2BD75}
“A Muslim leader was brought to the school to explain the splendor and glory of Islam. One of our administrators, who should have been reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, instead got on the PA and questioned the morality of our pending air campaign. Perhaps most discomforting, was when several days after 9/11 my history teacher handed out a lengthy article lambasting the United States as absolutely wicked and condemning the notion of a military response. The article inquired, “Do we have a right to exploit the poor folk of the world for our benefit, because we claim we are free and they are not?”
The list goes on and on so spare me this crap that reciting the pledge for one minute a day is going to be of any ill consequence to our kids, its ridiculous.
“I’m not denying that it happens, but just because it happens, that doesn’t mean that it *should* happen. And it certainly doesn’t mean that it should therefore become a mandatory part of the cirriculum. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Interesting you categorize them both as wrongs as the ones I am refering to are of a politcal parties agenda as opposed to simple gratitude for ones country, regardless of political leanings.
If you are only going to use the last 8 years as a guide to what a party is capable of I suggest you dump as much BDS now as you can because in a few months you’ll have no one else to blame but the party in control.
In all fairness you have to admit that we have been kept safe along with any economy that flourished, especially due to Bush initiatives after 911 up until the most pi$$ poor congress in our history went into place 2 years ago.
You should fail to reckognize that almost all of Obamas ideas/initiatives have no choice but to usher in a much larger government than we have ever seen.
With health care, national civilian security force, government ownership of industry,tax increasses, mandated environmental initiatives,new federal programs etc etc etc …
“If values are to be taught, then they should be taught by the *parents*, not the public school system.”
Interesting how this opinion is prevalent when the arguement is against simple patriotism but never present from the left when say for example K thru 6th grade was suggested to take sex education classes.
November 17th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
The public schools in the US have been taken over by America hating communists. Try a private education, private tutoring, or home schooling.
November 17th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I am a parent of a child at Woodbury. The AP article that came out last Friday is biased and intentionally omitted many facts solely to make it sound like the pledge has been banned from our classrooms.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Here’s what is really happening in Woodbury, Vermont:
For the last ten years the pledge was said once a week, during the weekly school-wide assembly (wednesday mornings). Late last year the pledge stopped being said – and not intentionally! No one can say exactly when or how, but it did stop being said, toward the end of the year (about one month, tops.
This year, a parent wrote a letter to the Principal asking for the pledge to be said again. Without following established procedure, and only one week after that letter, that same parent started a petition which requested that the pledge be said every day. This parent told me that he did not get a satisfactory response from the principal in time and that’s why he started the petition. His petition said NOTHING about where or how the pledge would be said, only that it be daily.
Our town has over 600 registered voters and a total population of over 800. He did receive 310 signatures, he stood outside the school and he went door to door. (BTW, our town voted for Obama by over 60%)
Last month the school staff acted on the petition and they decided to have the students say the pledge together as a group. Their original decision was to have a 6th grader go to each of our four classrooms and ask those that wanted to recite the pledge to all go to the large common room, one floor up. A large majority of the students participated.
Last week the school staff changed that to having the school kids gather together right outside their classrooms. Our school has only four classrooms, all on the same floor.
The students all gather together as a group and the six grader selected for that day makes the school announcements and then leads their fellow students in saying the pledge. Then students then return to their rooms.
Many parents I talked to that DID sign the petition are satisfied with the school gathering together as a community and giving the older students the position of leadership for this historic oath.
Fox News has been running a report on our school all day Monday (Nov. 17). Their report claims that the students are banned from saying the pledge in the classrooms. THAT IS A LIE. There is NO policy banning them from the classrooms. If a student really wants to NOT join their fellow students but remain in the classroom to say the pledge, they would not be stopped.
Out of 50-something students, grades K through 6, I counted only 7 students that were not joining in saying the pledge. Many of those were Jehovah’s Witnesses and therefore had religious reasons for not doing so, and I respect them for that.
I told MY daughter that is was HER choice to say the pledge, after I made sure she understood ALL aspects of what it truly means, the good and the bad. She decided to say the pledge Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. On Monday and Thursday she is preparing herself for being the class helper, which is a good thig for her to be doing.
Our school has NOT been ‘taken over by America hating Communists’. The parent that started the petition has succeeded in fulfilling the exact text of the petition, to the satisfaction of many of the signers, yet he refuses to accept the decision of the Principal (which is all about his own agenda to force the principal out, as he said to me one night after we attended a school board meeting).
Worst of all the parent that started the petition brought an angry mob of mostly NON-Parents to the school last Friday to scare the school staff into doing it his way. The staff and students told me they were terrified of him and his unruly mob, as they stood right outside the front door and berated the School Board chair woman – who is a Christian home-schooler!!!
He did NOT follow the established procedures, by going right to a petition, and now he’s resorted to mob intimidation to force his agenda. That is the true story here. He is using the Rule of the Jungle to supplant the Rule of Law, and THAT is Un-American!
Our town is a healthy mix of left and right, as America is meant to be. We still have our annual Town Meeting to discuss all the matters before the town. We still agree to disagree with each other and yet remain friends and respect each other here. It is the author of the petition that is damaging all of that.
You have all been tricked by a biased AP reporter and lied to by Fox News, your hated and anger at our tiny school is wrong and unjustified by facts. Please, in the future, withhold your bile until you know more about the issues.
November 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
> Interesting how this opinion is prevalent when the arguement is against simple patriotism but never present from the left when say for example K thru 6th grade was suggested to take sex education classes.
The difference there is that patriotism is a value. It’s something whose worth and importance is open to interpretation. Sex ed, provided that the information discussed is limited to factual things (such as methods for preventing STD’s and pregnancy, how the biological function of sex works, etc.), is not. So I don’t see any problem with schools teaching sex ed in an age-appropriate way. It is fairly absurd to be suggesting that kindergarteners should have a sex-ed class (I can’t really think of anything that would be both relevant and age-appropriate in such a case), but 6th-graders definitely should have some sort of exposure to it, because that’s about when some people start to become interested in experimenting with sex (and that’s certainly about when it happened to me), and it’s better that they know some basic facts about it than nothing at all.
The distinction between values and facts is an important one. The school system has every obligation to communicate accurate and valid facts about any topic that is deemed likely to be useful to students (so thing like “sex causes pregnancy” and “using a condom can greatly reduce the risk of contracting an STD, but doesn’t eliminate it completely”), but it has no business “teaching” things that are really just values (like “sex is a spiritual experience meant to be shared only between mand and wife”), because values are open to individual interpretation, and of very little objective worth. Patriotism is a value. A properly constructed (and articulated) sex-ed cirriculum is not.
November 18th, 2008 at 1:12 am
“Lilli-Lisab your good examples of generation W saying “let the kid’s teach themselves!? brian
ummmm … how did i get in your little conversation?
i’m a teacher, we have to say the pledge … it is the law …
or at least we did have to say it until hussein decided to make us teach sex ed instead …
and i wish i was generation W … i remember roots (the mini-series)
November 18th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Aroth.
The fact of the matter is that the inintiative did want to include kindrgarteners. So I ask. Where is the “value” in that ?
I noticed you could not address the many other examples I offered but in typical lib fashion evaded to the sex issue.
I would like to see some stats on that show any detriment caused to a child by simply reciting the pledge.
I’ll bet teaching a child K thru 5th grade sex ed will have a significantly larger impact on that child as oppossed to spending less than a minute reciting the pledge.
And please, dont even try to tell me that sex ed is not teaching a set of values and using facts to support those values.
The same can be applied to the pledge whereas the child will intuitivly at some point want to know what it means which is what happened with myself and many of my classmates. We got it, it was no big deal.
You seem to decide for yourself out of expediency what is construed as instilling values or fact and what does not.
If you think that sex ed is not about instilling values, the protection and quality of life, all I can say is that I hope and pray that you never ever conduct such a course.
I will simply say that saying the pledge verses sex ed at K 2nd, 3rd,or 4th grade can only have minimal impact on the child as opposed the mind boggling gauntlet of scenarios that a child must run through his head in order to study sex ed.
Millions of kids grew up saying the pledge every morning for decades, what harm did it do ?
Still, I doubt seriously that you can answer to the many many forms of leftist indoctrination taking place in out schools or just the few examples I mentioned.
If you can somehow convince me that many many things that are of liberal fact and value are not being pushed on our kids in todays schools I will retract my insistance that the pledge be said for less than a minute each day.
Until then the leftys have no business getting upset over what is a simple display of gratitude to country.
Please, stop trying to confuse a simple recital with complicated curriculum and extensive levels of instruction.
It insults everyones intelligence.
November 18th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
what is the reason to teach the pledge of allegiance, the star spangled banner, america the beautiful, the declaration of independence, the bill of rights, the usa constitution, how to put on a condom etc.?
it is part of our collective culture, our government, the basis of our freedoms (and contraception plans)
if you do not teach them in public schools where would they be appropriate? these are PUBLIC schools after all and the students should know the fundamental rights, political theories, societal CUSTOMS (and the pledge is a custom), and sexual techniques of these United States of America!
do we live in england? do we pledge our allegiance to a monarch? no “to the flag of the United States of America, and to the repulic for which it stands”. are we a federation of many different countries? no, we are “one nation under God”. do we leave air trapped in the tip of a condom? no, we “squeeze the tip gently so no air is trapped inside. hold the tip while you unroll the condom…all the way down. if the condom doesn’t unroll, it’s on wrong. throw it away and start over with a new one.”
these are basic tenets of our society