The Pledge at Public Schools

[HuskyCaucasian]

but it is a way of honoring the country AND the flag... therefore... the Anthem = Pledge

Thanks for clarifying that for me. I should have made my post more clear.

[shoota]

I'm glad American citizens have the right to not stand for the pledge, but the people whose reason for not standing is to irk those standing are trash.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I'm glad American citizens have the right to not stand for the pledge, but the people whose reason for not standing is to irk those standing are trash.

 

And the people who trash people for not standing are irksome.

[Texsox]

And the people who trash people for not standing are irksome.

 

I am rasing a green bottle of Tsingtao to you

[WilliamTell]

I'm glad American citizens have the right to not stand for the pledge, but the people whose reason for not standing is to irk those standing are trash.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[mreye]

And the people who trash people for not standing are irksome.

 

Ugh. My head is spinning.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Update:

 

The local paper ran my guest commentary as I wrote it. I got a call from the parent who apologized and told me that she hoped I hadn't taken it personally, etc.

 

So all is well. w00t.

[southsider2k5]

Update:

 

The local paper ran my guest commentary as I wrote it. I got a call from the parent who apologized and told me that she hoped I hadn't taken it personally, etc.

 

So all is well. w00t.

 

Quiet Commie

 

BTW, good for you for standing up to the asshole parent. I kinda wish our system had more of those in a way, because our big problem is that the parents just don't care. I can't tell you how many parents my wife has talked to whose response was "And?"

[Texsox]

Quiet Commie

 

BTW, good for you for standing up to the asshole parent. I kinda wish our system had more of those in a way, because our big problem is that the parents just don't care. I can't tell you how many parents my wife has talked to whose response was "And?"

 

Exactly what I was thinking. My response to parents who complain is to think of something I could have them volunteer to do. She is unhappy with the patriotic response to the pledge, let her head up a Veterans Day program or something the school would like done but doesn't have paid staff to accomplish.

[mreye]

Quiet Commie

 

BTW, good for you for standing up to the asshole parent. I kinda wish our system had more of those in a way, because our big problem is that the parents just don't care. I can't tell you how many parents my wife has talked to whose response was "Quiet, I'm on Soxtalk right now."

 

Fixed

[Controlled Chaos]

I still don't get how some kid took it all upon themselves to not stand. I mean if everyone in the class is always standing, how did some kid just come in one day and decide to buck the trend and see what happens. That's a ballsy little kid.

[bmags]

I still don't get how some kid took it all upon themselves to not stand. I mean if everyone in the class is always standing, how did some kid just come in one day and decide to buck the trend and see what happens. That's a ballsy little kid.

 

or perhaps the epitomy of laziness.

[santo=dorf]

QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Feb 9, 2007 -> 11:45 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Update:

 

The local paper ran my guest commentary as I wrote it. I got a call from the parent who apologized and told me that she hoped I hadn't taken it personally, etc.

 

So all is well. w00t.

Oh come on. File a lawsuit against the parents and the school district for harrasment.

 

We want to see you on Fox News.

[mreye]

I still don't get how some kid took it all upon themselves to not stand. I mean if everyone in the class is always standing, how did some kid just come in one day and decide to buck the trend and see what happens. That's a ballsy little kid.

 

Parents.

[LowerCaseRepublican]

Parents.

And religion.

 

Jehovah's Witnesses (especially orthodox) will not stand for the pledge because they believe it is worship of the flag -- which is idol worship, something deemed a violation of one of the 10 Commandments.

 

That's how the case in 1943 with the W. VA Board started. And also I knew that Jehovah's Witnesses don't stand due to religious purposes because I was in grade school with two kids who were JW's.

[SleepyWhiteSox]

So what are the specific, valid reasons that some of these kids aren't standing?

 

And you tell them all to stand but some just decide not to and you let them undermine your authority as their teacher?

[Rex Kickass]

Under the law, a valid reason would be "I don't want to."

[SleepyWhiteSox]

Under the law, a valid reason would be "I don't want to."

 

I wonder how many teachers have gotten arrested for making a student follow a rule even though "they don't want to"...

[LowerCaseRepublican]

So what are the specific, valid reasons that some of these kids aren't standing?

 

And you tell them all to stand but some just decide not to and you let them undermine your authority as their teacher?

Legally, I can't force them to stand. But way to read the thread and get all the facts before snapping off. It isn't a question about authority as a teacher. It is a question of legality and civil liberties that students have. Schools cannot make it a rule to have all students stand because it is illegal.

 

The US Supreme Court of the United States ruled that mandatory and forced flag salutation is antithetical to the Constitution.

 

Yanked from Wiki:

The Majority opinion in Barnette was written by Justice Robert Jackson and it is Jackson’s eloquent remarks that have become the legacy of the decision. Justice Felix Frankfurter authored the opinion three years earlier in Gobitis and his opinion rested squarely on four legs. In Barnette Justice Jackson systematically knocked each leg off Frankfurter’s Gobitis decision.

 

Jackson began with Frankfurter’s designation of the flag as a national symbol. He did not question Frankfurter’s designation of the flag as a national symbol instead he criticized the pedestal Frankfurter put such national symbols on. Jackson derided symbols as a “primitive but effective way of communicating ideas,” and chided that “a person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man’s comfort and inspiration is another’s jest and scorn.”

 

Next Jackson denied Frankfurter’s argument that flag-saluting ceremonies were an appropriate way to try and build the “cohesive sentiment” that Frankfurter believed national unity depended on. Jackson utterly rejected Frankfurter’s argument, citing the Roman effort to drive out Christianity, the Spanish Inquisition of the Jews and the Siberian exile of Soviet dissidents as evidence of the “ultimate futility” of those historical efforts to coerce unanimous sentiment out of a populace. Jackson continued, warning that, “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

 

Then Jackson dealt with Frankfurter’s assertion that forcing students to salute the flag, and threatening them with expulsion if they chose not to, was a permissible way to foster national unity. Jackson’s rejection of this section of Frankfurter’s argument has proved the most quoted section of his opinion. In his Gobitis opinion Frankfurter’s solution was for the dissenters to seek out solutions to their problems at the ballot box. Jackson responded that the conflict in this case was between authority and the individual and that the founders intended the Bill of Rights to put some rights out of reach from majorities, ensuring that some liberties would endure beyond political majorities. "The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities ... 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."

 

The last leg of Frankfurter’s Gobitis opinion reasoned that matters like saluting the flag were issues of “school discipline” that are better left to local officials rather than federal judges. In an oft-quoted passage Justice Jackson knocked out the final leg of Frankfurter’s opinion, sending the Gobitis decision to the grave. "But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. 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."

[Heads22]

apu,

 

Why don't you just go back to drowning puppies and hating all people of all faiths? That apu was more interesting than the teacher apu.

 

Yours truly,

Heads

[WhiteSoxfan1986]

When I was in high school a few years back, they started up the pledge immediately after the 911 tragedies, but it had always been optional. It was a large, public high school in the Chicago suburbs, yet all sides were happy as far as I knew.

 

We did the pledge from 9/12/01 until I graduated in 2004.

[Texsox]

Just wondering how many states also say their state pledge in school as well.

 

The pledge of allegiance to the Texas state flag is

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible."

 

Lesser states probably don't even have one . . .

[Reddy]

Just wondering how many states also say their state pledge in school as well.

 

The pledge of allegiance to the Texas state flag is

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible."

 

Lesser states probably don't even have one . . .

 

looks like somebody's state has an inferiority complex...

Edited February 12, 2007 by Reddy

[Texsox]

looks like somebody's state has an superiority complex...

 

fixed

[Controlled Chaos]

Legally, I can't force them to stand. But way to read the thread and get all the facts before snapping off. It isn't a question about authority as a teacher. It is a question of legality and civil liberties that students have. Schools cannot make it a rule to have all students stand because it is illegal.

 

The US Supreme Court of the United States ruled that mandatory and forced flag salutation is antithetical to the Constitution.

 

Yanked from Wiki:

The Majority opinion in Barnette was written by Justice Robert Jackson and it is Jackson’s eloquent remarks that have become the legacy of the decision. Justice Felix Frankfurter authored the opinion three years earlier in Gobitis and his opinion rested squarely on four legs. In Barnette Justice Jackson systematically knocked each leg off Frankfurter’s Gobitis decision.

 

Jackson began with Frankfurter’s designation of the flag as a national symbol. He did not question Frankfurter’s designation of the flag as a national symbol instead he criticized the pedestal Frankfurter put such national symbols on. Jackson derided symbols as a “primitive but effective way of communicating ideas,” and chided that “a person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man’s comfort and inspiration is another’s jest and scorn.”

 

Next Jackson denied Frankfurter’s argument that flag-saluting ceremonies were an appropriate way to try and build the “cohesive sentiment” that Frankfurter believed national unity depended on. Jackson utterly rejected Frankfurter’s argument, citing the Roman effort to drive out Christianity, the Spanish Inquisition of the Jews and the Siberian exile of Soviet dissidents as evidence of the “ultimate futility” of those historical efforts to coerce unanimous sentiment out of a populace. Jackson continued, warning that, “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.”

 

Then Jackson dealt with Frankfurter’s assertion that forcing students to salute the flag, and threatening them with expulsion if they chose not to, was a permissible way to foster national unity. Jackson’s rejection of this section of Frankfurter’s argument has proved the most quoted section of his opinion. In his Gobitis opinion Frankfurter’s solution was for the dissenters to seek out solutions to their problems at the ballot box. Jackson responded that the conflict in this case was between authority and the individual and that the founders intended the Bill of Rights to put some rights out of reach from majorities, ensuring that some liberties would endure beyond political majorities. "The very purpose of the Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities ... 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."

 

The last leg of Frankfurter’s Gobitis opinion reasoned that matters like saluting the flag were issues of “school discipline” that are better left to local officials rather than federal judges. In an oft-quoted passage Justice Jackson knocked out the final leg of Frankfurter’s opinion, sending the Gobitis decision to the grave. "But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. 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."

 

You still haven't answered this question? So what are the specific, valid reasons that some of these kids aren't standing?

Was it becuase they are Jehovah's Witnesses? I know you said that could be a reason, but you didn't say if it was THE reason some of your students didn't stand Oh and what grade is this?

Edited February 12, 2007 by Controlled Chaos