With a Gun to My Head… (When a Pledge Is Not a Pledge)
In a story on Friday, Get Schooled pointed out a the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this past week on Cameron Frazier v. Cynthia Alexandre – a case involving a Florida statue that requires public school students to recite the pledge of allegaince unless they have a note from home saying they can opt out.
According to the Get Schooled blog post:
The court upheld that it is unconstitutional to require students who have been excused from saying the pledge to stand during the recitation. But the court didn’t say whether all students have the right to refuse to participate.
The blog post asks the simple question, “Should we recite the pledge?” When last I looked, there were 25 comments on the page…
Most people didn’t answer the question that Get Schooled asked. They talked about whether we should make kids say the pledge even when they don’t want to, which of course is a different question.
Should we say the pledge in school? Why not? Of course we should. Under God and all… (Hear the Marine Corp Marching Band playing Stars and Stripes Forever in the background.)
But now the real question: Should we make a kid say the plegde, even if they don’t want to?
Why would we do that? If a student wants to sit and look disinterested (or even disgusted) while the rest of my room says the pledge, in America they have that right. If they disrupt the process for other students, that’s different. And they should be disciplined for being disruptive then (which is different from being disciplined for refusing to say the pledge).
If I make a pledge of some kind because I have a gun to my head, that pledge is meaningless. Anyone who acts like it has meaning under those circumstances seems stupid to the disinterested observer. And as a teacher, if it comes to a confrontation over the issue there’s really no way for me to win. I look bad to my class if the kid says the pledge, I look bad to my class if the kid doesn’t, and either way I lose six or eight minutes of instructional time in the process. It’s a no win and it’s meaningless.
On top of that, it’s a violation of the student’s rights. The U.S. Supreme Court spoke to the issue 65 years ago in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette. Wikipedia describes that ruling’s significance:
It was a significant court victory won by Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose religion forbade them from saluting or pledging to political institutions or symbols. However, the Court did not address the effect the compelled salutation and recital ruling had upon their particular religious beliefs, but instead ruled that the state did not have the power to compel speech in that manner for anyone.
To my knowledge, that basic principle has not been modified by the court…
