im 20 for reference. ever since i was a kid, up until hs, we were forced every morning to stand, look at the flag and hold our hearts and say:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
i didnt stand a single time because i disagreed with being forced, and i was berated by the teacher in front of everyone, and he threatened to kick me out of class if i ever did it again. i was about 11-12 then, it was 2015.
Yep. It was in the 90s, and after 7th grade we mostly didn’t do it anymore (some court ruled it wasn’t legal to force us) but we had to sit quietly during the point when we were supposed to be doing in.
EDIT: You are in your 20s, and your teacher yelled at you? He was breaking the law. I bet you remember who it was too. If you see him on social media, I suggest you send him (West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)) and demand an apology.
https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep319624/
And tell him a veteran told you this.
thanks for your reply. this all happened in about 2015.
yes, i remember him clearly. he was also incredibly inappropriate with his female students. I remember an incident where i was walking out of his classroom and he was showing another female student “a joke” where he used siri or something to look up “penis” and show her the results. mine you we were all 11 and 12. everyone called him a pedo. he was coach of the girls soccer team. i wish i could go back and stand up for her and myself, but i was a scared kid.
edit: just looked him up on FB. his face made me feel such dread. he has a kid now, a young girl
At some point in high school I stopped standing. I want to say my freshman year but I could be wrong. It was just on a whim one day, although I was a bit of a rebel at heart, I was not the type of student to get in trouble for anything.
Anyway, from the day I first decided to ignore the pledge, I was never reprimanded for it. Some teachers would stare daggers at me but I never received any punishment nor were my parents notified.
Edit to add: The time period would have been sometime from 2007-2010
I am twice your age and we did it for a while then the schools just stopped. The cult I was in didn’t like the pledge though so I would just stand and murmur certain parts (like “under god”) to avoid being punished.
We only had one teacher tell us we were required to (we were standing up just kinda mumbling it), the following class everyone just stayed seated and at least 3 of us had printouts in our backpacks confirming that it was a violation of the first amendment to require it.
He didn’t even acknowledge it, knowing that teacher I imagine he looked it up right after and realized he was wrong.
We eventually resumed standing up but hands at our sides and silent.
Edit: if this is showing up as a reply to another comment, it was supposed to be a top level comment to the OP. Some weird stuff keeps happening with my comments but I’m not sure if it’s just visual.
I went to elementary school in the late 60s and early 70s and yes, we said the pledge every day. I didn’t think anything about it back then.
As a Boy Scout in the mid 70s, we said the pledge at every meeting. Again, I gave it no thought.
In the 90s, I was in a Ham Radio club and they said it before every meeting. I found it odd, but went along with them.
In the last few years, I joined the local HOG (Harley Owners Group) chapter and they said it before every meeting. Now I’m beginning to question why, as an adult in a seemingly innocuous club, am I supposed to pledge my allegiance to the flag. This isn’t the military, there’s no reason for it.
If you’re wanting me to say the pledge to the flag, you’re just wanting me to show my patriotism and that word is about as vile to me now as a racial slur.
If I ever find myself in an organization that wants me to stand and recite the pledge, I’ll be walking out the door.
U can always go to a different country :)
average american’s reaction when someone doesnt want to be forced to worship a piece of cloth and a god they don’t believe in every morning, and get berated if they dont lmfao. home of the free, right?
Non american here. I have a few questions.
- What exactly does it mean?
- What if you don’t agree with it, for example the “under of god” part.
- Does it have a legal status? For example can you be arrested for not pleging allegiance, or failing to have pledged at some point in your life?
- What about freedom of speech? How can one force you to express yourself? I feel like freedom of speech goes both ways : I’d like to have the same freedom of “not speech” as well.
- As school children, we swore this oath. It describes loyalty to the flag and (more importantly) the nation and ideals that the flag represents.
- As a child, I would just be silent during the ‘under god’ part. No one noticed. If they had, there isn’t really anything they could do about it.
- There have been lawsuits. Basically, you are not legally obligated to say it. There would be a lot of peer pressure to do so, because each of our school days would start with the whole class saying it.
- Again, it is controversial, but you are not technically forced to say it.
Here is a breakdown of what the pledge means:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America”
I swear loyalty to the flag
“and to the Republic for which it stands,”
and to the government it represents
“one Nation under God,”
a country guided by the Lord!
“indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”
united, with freedom and justice for everyone**terms and conditions apply
No, there’s no legal requirements to say the pledge or anything. I’ve never seen it done outside of schools, it’s just a weird tradition that has been carried on.
In my high school nobody in my classes actually said it, but one of the teachers or the student council president would say it over the intercom (we didn’t even stand for it, usually just went back to our work while they talked).
As a younger child in elementary school I remember we were expected to say it, and I do remember a couple kids getting yelled at for not saying it (by the teacher, I don’t think there was any formal punishment). I know some Muslim children would say the whole thing and leave out the “under God” part.
I never paid much attention to it until I got older and realized how weird it was. I’m hoping it goes away eventually.
The long and short of it is that the pledge of allegiance is exactly what it says on the tin; you are pledging that your loyalty is to the flag (by proxy, to the United States). However, as a US citizen, one has a 1st amendment right that is supposed to protect you from being forced by the government to say the pledge (otherwise known as compelled speech). Constitutionally, you cannot be arrested or otherwise punished for not saying the pledge, or for expressing distaste for the pledge, leaving out the “under God” part while reciting the pledge, or even saying that you think the flag is nothing more than a nationalist propaganda symbol.
That all said, I feel like there is at least one or two stories a year where a student is accosted by a teacher because they refused to recite the pledge. Any teacher who does this is setting themselves and the school up for a lawsuit, as accosting/punishing a student for not reciting the pledge is flat out unconstitutional..
On a different note, as an American who grew up mindlessly citing the pledge throughout my K-12 years, it was a pretty harsh realization when I learned that this is essentially a kind of indoctrination. I honestly feel a bit gross when I go to my kid’s school events and the first thing they do is trot out the flag and start the pledge. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a push to have it removed as a regular thing at public schools in the US (nor would I be surprised at a reactionary response from the “patriots” in our country if there was a movement against the pledge…).
- The Pledge of Allegiance was first created in 1892 to foster a sense of national unity. It was brainwashy even back then, especially having children recite it every morning, but it wasn’t really intentionally malicious. It was intended to instill a sense of national fraternity in a fractured group of people, during a time that political tensions ran high and America was being filled with a large percentage of immigrants. Giving everyone an identity as Americans was important in moving the country forward at the time. That doesn’t make it not nationalism, but at the time it was instituted I can understand where they were coming from.
Adding the “Under God” part and requiring it to be recited every morning before class wasn’t instituted until 1954 during the Cold War era, when adults were worried that their children were commie spies. Their way of solving this was to shove Christianity and American Nationalism down the throats of everyone within earshot.
2,3,4. Via the Pledge’s Wikipedia page:
In 1940, the Supreme Court, in Minersville School District v. Gobitis, ruled that students in public schools, including the respondents in that case—Jehovah’s Witnesses who considered the flag salute to be idolatry—could be compelled to swear the Pledge. In 1943, in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court reversed its decision. Justice Robert H. Jackson, writing for the 6 to 3 majority, went beyond simply ruling in the precise matter presented by the case to say that public school students are not required to say the Pledge on narrow grounds, and asserted that such ideological dogmata are antithetical to the principles of the country, concluding with:
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 or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
So as of current day, no, you cannot be compelled to stand and recite the Pledge. You WILL most likely receive nasty comments from your homeroom teacher, particularly if they are religious and/or older folks, and can be sent out of class to the principals office for basically any reason or no reason including this. It’s against the law for the principal to leverage punishment against you for not reciting the pledge, but they can and will make your life very difficult if they feel like it without direct “punishment”.
But in general, no, there is no legal punishment or precedent for someone who does not recite the pledge of allegiance. At worst, if you’re accused of being a spy or of treason, it will be wielded as evidence that you are “un-American” and act as “proof” that you hate America. But it is not a punishable offense by itself.
