Sounds to me as if your son, either at your suggestion, or with your approval, decided to do this. Tell me, what do YOU have against the Pledge?
The function of 'public' school in this country today is primarily social indoctrination --- it is most certainly not about developing creative, vibrant intellects.
You're a liberal, aren't you? The purpose of the school has never - at least before the ex-60s radicals got hold of it - been about "developing creative, vibrant intellects". It's about giving students the skills and knowledge base they need to develop their own "creative, vibrant intellects" if they so choose.
The "creative vibrant intellect" mentality is what gave us make-it-up-as-you-go spelling, "self-esteem", and the-answer-YOU-get-is-the-right-answer-today math.
By the way, I'm sure YOUR child is the one exception to the rule, but 9 out of 10 students, if told they can bend or break the rules, rock the boat, cause a disturbance and have parental backing to do so, will continue to find other ways to be a disturbance or disrupt the classroom. In a respectful way, of course.
Tell me, what do YOU have against the Pledge?
The phrase 'indivisible'...the fact that children's minds are not sufficiently developed to be cognizant of the effects/techniques of brainwashing...any 'ceremony' which, by sheer volume of repetition, becomes meaningless. How many times did you actually think about those words when you were a child? How often even now?
...purpose of...school has never...been about "developing creative, vibrant intellects". It's about giving students the skills and knowledge base they need to develop their own "creative, vibrant intellects" if they so choose.
Even a public school teacher would have to admit that's mere semantic hair-splitting. If a child comes equipped with engrossing curiousity, and brain matter literally thirsty for the raw data that curiousity provides; and a teacher then guides that combination towards efficient means of assimilating/collating/digesting same, it would seem rather vacuous to insist such could not be described as 'developing creative, vibrant intellects'.
BTW, since you brought it up, do you use the 'whole-language' method of teaching reading? Do you use the math textbook recommended by your local school board? Do you rock the boat at all, or are you content to work within a system which is corrupt at its core?
Interesting observation about the '9 out of 10'. When I was a child in public school, I would occasionally decline to participate in the pledge. You know what? Back then, it was treated much the same as their decision to recite the pledge was treated by me -- no big deal one way or the other. No one got their knickers in a knot, no one made a federal case out of things, from either side. I would call the difference between then and now a devolution of the capacity to withstand dissent civilly. Maybe you, or someone else, could tell me why this should be? (I'll tell you up front, I believe the greatest factor to be the effects of the continued dumbing-down of curriculums, and the ever-increasing emphasis on social indoctrination, the desired outcome being good, obedient little citizens who question very little.)