Air Force veteran opposes Pledge in child’s classroom
Fox News reports that 26-year-old female Air Force veteran Haley Sides has declared war on her child’s school because the principal of the public school has asked student’s to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of each day. Side’s explanation for her opposition to this new policy is somewhat convoluted, so if you can figure it out, please explain it to me;
“It pains me to think that at a school that emphasizes thinking globally we would institute something that makes our children think that this country alone is where their allegiance lies,” said Sides. “This has no educational value for young children. Absolutely none.”
Sides started crying as she described why she is so opposed to the pledge being recited in her daughter’s school. The explanation goes back to her partner, a Jamaican-born Navy serviceman who died just seven months after obtaining U.S. citizenship — and when his daughter was 18 months old.
According to the paper, the pledge will be read over the PA system every Monday and recited in individual classrooms the other days of the week. Students who don’t want to participate will be allowed to sit or stand respectfully.
It’s a public school, so it’s funded by American taxpayers…Side’s child’s education is coming out of our pockets, don’t you think she owes us a bit of allegiance? i certainly sympathize with her that she lost her ‘partner” and the child lost her father, but that’s certainly no reason to start acting like a jackass and waving her DD214 around as if it gives her some measure of moral authority to shit all over everyone else’s patriotism. She can always shop around for a private school that doesn’t require the Pledge of Allegiance every morning.
Since the school isn’t forcing anyone to recite the Pledge, I’m assuming that Side is opposed to her child even hearing the pledge recited. She can always carry her ass to Jamaica and pledge allegiance to the Rastafarians since that’s where her allegiances seem to lie.
Category: General Whackos
@49, I didn’t think you would.
@51, Yeah, reservists and POGs always seem to get the USO shows and public adoration. When I was active I don’t think I was ever at a public event in our honor, or invited to an event as thanks for our service. We never even got a USO show in theater because they wouldn’t come out to dangerous FOBs.
Then I left active duty to go to college and joined the Reserves. Man, I think those guys spend more time going to shindigs than actually getting their shit together to fight. Every drill the announcement board is covered with free tickets, mass e-mails all the time looking for someone to put on a uniform and attend some soiree.
“To me it symbolizes what I’ve said. And from that view I just don’t think it should be the default mode that kids are taught to say it before they’re old enough to even know what it means.”
“It’s true, the United States is the greatest nation on earth. But it took me twenty years to unlearn all of the non-sense we were taught in the Tennessee public school system, and learn the dirty, awful truth about all of the skeletons in our closet. I don’t want my own kids to have to waste so much precious time unlearning before they actually learn.”
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You are one of those that sets the bar so high that there is no reasonable way for this country to achieve it, in your eyes. The pledge doesn’t gloss over our history, I don’t know where you can surmise that.
Have you thought about homeschooling? Many parents are doing that now, since many are like you and want to teach their kids lessons based on their own personal perception of our history. I found that to be the case when my eldest daughter had to do a report on the Spanish-American War and so I had her do research using the National Archives online. That way she would get the un-biased version; just the facts, but when those facts didn’t match up with her text book, she was told she had to do her report based on her textbook and not the historical record. Revisionist history is still creeping right along and all we can do as parents is to attempt to show both sides.
The Pledge is no reason for me not to send my kids to public school. It actually makes a useful example for me to explain to them the difference between saying things because you understand and believe them, and saying things because it’s what’s expected of you. I don’t want to protect them from the world, in any way. I want them to understand it as it is. But, ideally, I think that the Pledge should just not be something we make school children do before they understand it.
It is also an opportunity for me to explain to them how when people are scared they often do irrational things, and cave to people promising safety for conformity. “Under God” being an example of that. The only reason those two words are in the Pledge is because politicians of my Grandparents’ generation thought that we might thwart communists by metaphorically brandishing crosses at them in 1954. It has nothing to do with some religious underpinning of our founding.
“It has nothing to do with some religious underpinning of our founding”
That’s true, because it says “endowed by our creator”, not G-d, so “our creator” could have been a far off distant relative of Steve Jobs for all we, or they, knew.
“It has nothing to do with some religious underpinning of our founding.”. That’s your opinion, and you’re certainly entitled to it. Others have different opinions, and they’re entitled to them. Obviously, those opinions won’t converge.
At my old school, the teacher threatened to write me up for not rising for the pledge. Talk about oppression! This country is brainwashing its children into believing it is a democracy when it is totally NOT! Why should we punish a child who isn’t rising for the flag when the top 1% is doing nothing to help our failing economy?
Poor thing ALMOST got “written up” by a teacher. If that’s as tough as your life gets, junior, be grateful. Here’s some advice for your pampered ass; never again wander into a group of mostly combat veterans and complain about how you’ve been oppressed in this country. And we know it’s not a democracy – its a republic. Learn the difference, cry baby.
For the Occutard in #58,. the so-called 1%? Would that be Michael Moore, Algore, Jean Fraud Kerry, Baracka Obama, Anna Wintour, Stevie Spielberg, George Lucas? That 1%?
When you add the Pelosis, Kennedys, most of the old guard in Congress, the new rich in the “green industry,” and folks like the Ayers, that 1% gets a tad crowded. (Mostly with the same folks who are fomenting, and financing, the occupy “movement.”)
Jeeez, I didn’t whine like that when I was four. I wonder how old QA292 is? I wonder if s/he’s ever held a job??