Reply to pledge of allegiance in schools?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why? Your children need to learn respect.  They are citizens of the United States.  They need not salute the flag by saying the pledge of allegiance.  However, it is respectful to stand and be silent.

Jehovah's Witnesses have a long history of not saluting the flag or saying the pledge of allegiance b/c they feel it is an act of worship in contravention of the Second Commandment prohibtion against idolatry and their duties as Christians to be "in the world but not of it."  However, their children will stand quietly.

If the children of people with a deeply held religious belief prohibiting participationn in the plege can stand out of respect, so can your children.

I for one will teach my children the pledge and its meaning.  It was authored by a socialist Baptist Minister, Francis Bellamy, who felt it good to instill a sense of patriotism among the country’s schoolchildren.  It is good to remember that at the time it was written, the Civil War had ended less than 30 years before.  One of the results of that war was the unification of the United States as one nation rather than as a simple “union of sovereign states,” yet there was still not a strong notion of being “American.”

I do not want my children to mindlessly mouth the pledge, which is why I have read to them James Clavell’s “The Children’s Story” about the dangers of teaching our children to mouth words without truly knowing what they mean.

You can read it here:   http://home.comcast.net/~llefler/clavell.htm
[/quote]

Agreed that the Pledge matters and people should fully understanding the meaning. Can 4 year-olds really do so or is it just brainwashing? Btw: Bellamy was not merely motivated by patriotism. He wrote the pledge as part of a marketing campaign to solicit magazine subscriptions and ended up selling 26,000 flags. His version did not include "under God", either, which was added in 1954 - 60 years later -  during the height of the Cold War to protect us all from "godless Communists".[/quote]

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