In the US most students recite “the pledge of allegiance” every morning before school, which is kind of crazy. If you were in charge, what if anything would you replace it with?
Gee, I dunno…How about learning something?
Nothing, propaganda pledges don’t have a place in institutions of learning.
I vow to live my life in a way that supports the thriving of all life in perpetuity.
An elevator music rendition of the national anthem, if anything is needed at all (or maybe use this opportunity to remind students that individual towns/cities have flags, anthems, and pledges too).
Shower thought: What do deaf kids do for the pledge?
hmmm, the tao of bill & ted kinda works for me.
This one sounds kinda good:
- One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
- The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
- One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
- The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the another is to forgo your own.
- Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
- People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
- Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion , wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Satanic laugh
Nothing. Just let the kids do their morning uninterrupted.
It’s state law where I live. Fucking crazy.
The Team Rocket motto
I have never seen the pledge of allegiance recited in a classroom, not met a person who did this.
As far as I can tell, it’s a myth.
I did everyday K-12. Nice to meet you.
I definitely did growing up in elementary school. Every morning, during the school wide announcements, the principle or whoever was talking on the PA system would recite the pledge and students were pretty much expected to stand and put one hand on their chest and at least listen if not recite it.
It seemed to taper off in my middle school years, and basically only ever happened at football games once I was in high-school.
This is all in a fairly blue area of a generally pretty blue state.
Blue state blue country and we were expected to recite the pledge every morning of k-8 (I don’t recall it being a thing in high school.) I remember kids whose parent were politically active being punted out of class for not participating too.
Back when I was an extremely earnest 14-year-old I wanted to replace it with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot speech, but honestly that’s probably too long and I don’t think forcing 5-year-olds to recite something they won’t even understand is a good way to instill anything worth instilling.
Free breakfast.
Yes and
Damn that’s a good answer.
I really can’t remember the last time I said it in school, would have been super early on, 1st or 2nd grade back in the 70s. Definitely not after that.
can it be nothing. why not nothing
And do the same for the national anthem before every fucking sporting event. I’ll be damned if I’m standing and praying to a flag at every summer swim meet that is already going to take 4 hours to get done.
Don’t even get me started. My high school didn’t just do sports events, but they did the anthem or the pledge before just about every single event held in the building.
Cultlike behavior.
Actually, no. Just Cult behavior.
I never understood why Americans do that. For international events where the anthems of both teams are played, sure. But otherwise? Do you guys forget which country you are in?
It’s part of the militarization of everything, and acts as patriotism propaganda.
Not only the anthem, but they usually have armed forces people, equipment, sponsorship, etc. and why it’s such a big deal with athletes don’t fawn enough over it (eg. the take a knee “scandal”)
Sports are a strong recruitment tool, being popular with men throughout their lives, and have been wildly taken over with military propaganda as a result.
It’s an effect of the crazy religiosity that Europe shipped over before the country was even founded. So much nutty Protestant fervor has rippled through American society since then. It infected secular institutions over time.
Which makes it even more crazy to me.
I live in a very Protestant area in Europe. In fact, many of the Protestants who got driven out of France around 1700 have settled around here, so roughly a similar timeframe to the ones in America. And we turned out entirely different. Here, Protestants are considered the “technically Christian on paper but probably hasn’t seen a church from the inside in a decade” kind of person while (some) Catholics are the conservative hardliners who want bibles and crosses in classrooms.
Might have something to do with the fact that, in Europe, they had to live alongside other people. In America they had their little bubbles where the crazy could echo and become stronger. Combine that with the amount of opportunistic grifters that came to and were bred in America. The “land of opportunity” inspired an individualistic greed that was more than happy to use religion to feed itself. The Mormons are the classic example.
Catholics in America were a minority and there was bigotry directed at them. They were more inclined to keep separate—not so much now. In my town, the catholic school kids would have Catholic slurs shouted at them by the public school kids. These days the conservative Catholics are more or less allied with the evangelical Protestants.
How dare you propose freedom in the land of the free. No freedom for you! Not until you pledge an allegiance.
If anything, get them to find/research their own that they identify with and explain what makes it personal to them.
Lol I can’t wait to hear everyone recite their respective pledges at the same time
I just never did it, why even replace it. just remove it entirely.
