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.)
And that has not a whit to do with what we are talking about.
I want to hear your Constitutional basis for believing that secular humanism is to be favored over those who believe in a God at school. The dumbing down of America's public school curriculum began as soon as Judicial loose constuctionists told students that their free speeches rights were not legitimate within the context of school, which is where the free exchange of ideas is supposed to be.
What's wrong with "indivisible"? I think the Civil War settled that argument, didn't it?
...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?
Actually, perhaps I was a precocious child, or perhaps it's a result of my 3rd grade teacher, who explained the pledge and its purpose to us quite well, but I understood what I was saying. I've also tried to explain it to my classes.
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?
Not that this has anything to do with the subject of the thread, but I don't teach elementary school. I teach environmental science, but I supplement the information given in our "politically correct" textbooks with information from the "other side".
To me, part of the value of the Pledge of Allegiance is that it helps teach children that there are other priorities besides themselves - citizenship and country are also important.