School nurse bullies and berates student who refused to stand for pledge

[crazyfingers]

I recall a long conversation on the phone with my kids first public school principal. He didn't understand why anyone would object to the pledge. I pointed out that it's a lie because in this country some people clearly do not have equal liberty and justice. Gays for example and blacks suffer disproportionately under our "justice" system. I asked why kids should pledge to a lie. He admitted that the pledge isn't actually true but all a wish to be true. So then I asked him what business the school had asking kids to wish we were a nation under any god. That smack of excluding the non-theistic. In some ways he was a reasonable person and could not defend the pledge any more except that by law it has to be on the morning agenda.

Anyway, I was glad to at least get the superintendent to put fact that no one can be told to stand for the pledge into the student handbooks. See link to Secular Cafe a few posts above.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Since there is no federal/national law or policy requiring or encouraging schools to have their students cite the pledge, your criticism about it being characteristic of totalitarian dictatorships seems a bit off base.

Not all schools engage in it. Prohibiting it at the federal level would be an unnecessary infringement on states rights in my opinion, even though I do think it best to not incorporate it in schools.

The law in Massachusetts that requires all students to say the pledge violates US Supreme Court rulings. The wording of the law does not make it optional. Fortunately the Attorney Generals Office of Massachusetts came right out when the law was passed saying as much. But it's still required every morning in public schools and I'll bet few kids know that it can't be required.

PLenty of my wife's students sit out the pledge. I don' tknow if they view it as their civil right or if they are just hoping someone picks a fight with them so they can prove how tough they are.
My wife ignores them.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I think brainwashing's an overstatement with the pledge. They repeat it by rote. If you put any of the words with two syllables on a vocabulary test, i think most students will be unable to define them, though they mumble them five times a week.

I also doubt most of them could tell you the content except the same way 1st year Spanish students can tell you what day Miercoles is. By repeating the memorized list, not by knowing what they're saying when they do.

"Tommy? You make a pledge to two things each morning. DO you know what they are?"
"Um....Allegiance and... the flag?"

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't anticipate ever being in a situation that for political reasons, or reasons of credibility, that I would ever stand for the pledge. No one around here does the pledge except for that 1978 law requiring it in public schools.

If I actually ever went to a sports game and they did it I would most certainly continue to sit and eat my hot dog.

The pledge, besides being fascistic, is an insult to anyone who does not believe in a god or who is on the short end of equal protection of the law.

I was at an engineering dinner, and for some fucking reason they said the pledge. I have no idea why. I was one of only a few that didn't stand.

 

[crazyfingers]

I don't anticipate ever being in a situation that for political reasons, or reasons of credibility, that I would ever stand for the pledge. No one around here does the pledge except for that 1978 law requiring it in public schools.

If I actually ever went to a sports game and they did it I would most certainly continue to sit and eat my hot dog.

The pledge, besides being fascistic, is an insult to anyone who does not believe in a god or who is on the short end of equal protection of the law.

I was at an engineering dinner, and for some fucking reason they said the pledge. I have no idea why. I was one of only a few that didn't stand.

It's such a bizarre practice. From 1980 when I got out of high school to 2006 when my first kid started public school, I had never run into it in real life.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't anticipate ever being in a situation that for political reasons, or reasons of credibility, that I would ever stand for the pledge. No one around here does the pledge except for that 1978 law requiring it in public schools.

If I actually ever went to a sports game and they did it I would most certainly continue to sit and eat my hot dog.

The pledge, besides being fascistic, is an insult to anyone who does not believe in a god or who is on the short end of equal protection of the law.

Not to mention non-citizens that might be there.

On the other hand, I find standing during the pledge to be a basically harmless matter. Nobody's going to know if you're saying it or not. Just don't get too loud if you are putting some alternate words to it like some of us did in grade school. (The only change I can recall after all these years was "fag" for "flag", there were others.)

 

[Togo]

The practice of having to stand and chant a pledge to a flag every day was the one thing that people in the UK find most bizarre about my stories of my childhood. And given it's up against 'setting fire to the local school with a rocket', and 'breaking out of hospital quarantine at 1am', that's saying something. The idea of rows of children and adults all chanting the same political slogans, however heartfelt they maybe, just strikes a lot of people as sinister.