The Freedom NOT To Recite The Pledge Of Allegiance
Fourth graders at Charles H. Taylor Elementary School in Boston recite the Pledge of Allegiance on March 24.
Forgive me, dear reader, if I implore you to refrain from engaging in overly demonstrative platitudes about love of God or country when discussing the Pledge of Allegiance.
On this day of independence, when we celebrate America’s birthdate, I decided to embark on a cursory and perhaps ill-advised review of this invocation, long recited in classrooms nationwide. To my surprise, it remains a source of controversy, at the root of which are the most fundamental principles of our democracy: the First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty.
We may have been taught as pliable and vulnerable children that the pledge was all about love of God and country, but the pledge’s origins belie such dogma.
Some historical context is particularly instructive given our pitiable grasp of civics, including, it seems, among some educators.
I chose to return to this subject having covered it nearly a decade ago when so-called “pledge controversies” — more precisely, over the words “under God” — erupted at public schools in two California locales: Tracy and San Jacinto.
The San Jacinto Unified School District agreed in late October 2014 to apologize to a Monte Vista Middle School student after a teacher admonished an 11-year-old boy for not standing during the pledge.
But at West High School in Tracy, 17-year-old Derek Giardina received detention and a reduced grade in his speech class for omitting the “under God” in his required recitation. The school district, which claimed to respect everyone’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, supported the punishment because, it explained, it was part of an assignment to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, and, as district spokesperson Sam Strube put it, “If you’re going to lead the school in the pledge, you better say it in the traditional way.”
“A public forum where you’re going to represent the school is not a place where you can voice a controversial issue and force that on other people,” Strube said. He added that for any student who didn’t want to do the assignment, there was an alternative offered.
Giardina’s family sought legal representation, which did the trick. “The school district offered the student a secular poem instead,” Giardina’s attorney Monica Miller told me in an email.
Yet, to my surprise, this pledge business continues to be an issue.
In 2017, Mari Oliver, a high school senior in Spring, Texas, sat silently during the school’s daily recitation of the pledge. Texas state law requires students to recite it. She refused, objecting not only because she didn’t agree with the words “under God” but also because she did not believe that the United States guarantees “liberty and justice for all,” especially for people of color. She was harassed. She filed a lawsuit against several teachers, a school administrator and the school district, saying she was badgered for refusing to recite the pledge.
She won, reaching a settlement last year under which the Texas Association of School Boards paid her $90,000. A spokesperson said the school board decided to settle “in the interest of limiting continued expensive litigation.”
Oliver wasn’t the only Texas student to face such disdain that year. In Houston, high school senior India Landry also refused to stand, repeatedly. She was kicked out of class each time, told by her teacher she was being disrespectful. The fifth time she refused to stand she was expelled. She filed suit.
“This is not the NFL,” the principal’s secretary told her, according to the lawsuit. At the time, national debate raged over former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the national anthem.
The suit was resolved in a confidential settlement the following year.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is currently suspended awaiting an impeachment trial, had then defended the state’s law requiring students to stand, but a provision in Texas law allows students to refuse to recite the pledge provided that parents have given written permission. His argument: It’s about the rights of the parents, not the student.
“Schoolchildren cannot unilaterally refuse to participate in the pledge,” Paxton said at the time.
Hold your thought on that.
The suit was resolved in a confidential settlement the following year, but the state of Texas continues to fight to keep the law in place.
Fast forward to last November, when South Carolina ninth grader Marissa Barnwell was accosted by a teacher for failing to show “sufficient deference” to the pledge as it was announced during the daily over-the-intercom recitation. She didn’t stop to recite the pledge or even stand still in acknowledgment. The teacher grabbed her, shoved her against the wall to admonish her and sent her to the principal, who asked her, “Don’t you love your country?”
Like Texas, South Carolina law requires public schools to conduct the pledge each day, but they cannot punish a student or staffer who refuses to recite the pledge as long as they’re not disruptive and don’t infringe on the rights of others.
An attorney for the school district would only say the district is working on a response to the lawsuit.
If these educators profess to teach our children about civics and history, they are failing miserably. In fact, they could learn a lesson or two from the bravery and thoughtfulness of these students and their willingness to live by the courage of their convictions in the face of groupthink and bullying by the thought police. Especially when you’re a kid and the people shaming and pressuring you are adults in positions of authority. It’s a courage we should all be willing to muster.
Indeed, if educators knew anything about the pledge’s origins, they’d likely be embarrassed by their insidious suggestion that nonreligious citizens or students like Oliver and Barnwell are any less religious, any less patriotic, any less American than their classmates.
Forty-seven states have laws on the books requiring the pledge to be recited in public schools, though many have varying exemptions for those preferring not to. Those laws are unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943 that students are protected by the First Amendment and cannot be required to say the pledge or even stand during it. The case involved a Jehovah’s Witness student who refused to say the pledge in school, arguing it was against his religious beliefs.
The original pledge was never intended as an affirmation of faith or American patriotism. It was conceived as a marketing ploy.
In 1890, a magazine publisher was selling flags to schools as a premium to solicit subscriptions. When sales declined the following year, the publisher concocted the idea of using the quadricentennial of Christopher Columbus reaching the Americas to revive the flag effort, complete with flag salutes and pledge recitations in schools nationwide. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister, was commissioned to write the pledge, which first appeared in The Youth’s Companion on Sept. 8, 1892:
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“The United States of America” was added in 1923, then the words “under God” in 1954 – which Bellamy’s family descendants strongly protested. But our lawmakers decided this would somehow be a bold response to the perceived threat of those godless commies in Soviet Russia.
Typical, isn’t it? What many believe was about religion and patriotism was really about three dubious American obsessions: money, politics and the empty symbolic gesture.
Of equal historical note, perhaps, is the so-called Bellamy Salute, which accompanied recitations of the pledge. The salute, stiffly raised right arm with extended palm, became an amusingly awkward embarrassment when Italian Fascists in the 1920s, followed quickly by the Nazis, adopted the salute as their own. Congress passed a law in 1942 urging that the right hand now be placed over one’s heart.
Again, what we thought was about one thing was actually about our first apparent love in America: money.
One may appreciate, as well, the 1939 Porky Pig cartoon “Old Glory” in which Porky struggles to memorize the pledge. By the cartoon’s end, he has it down, complete with a salute, not the hand-over-heart gesture (and 48 stars on the flag). He does not say “god” but rather:
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In another twist, I once found this cartoon in full on a website called “GodTube,” which uses videos to preach Christian values. The irony, of course, is that the video doesn’t mention the word “god,” just as the original pledge didn’t.
The addition of “under God,” we should remember, occurred during a shameful time in America when ideological witch hunts targeted people suspected of treason and subversion with only conjecture as evidence. That contagion of fear continues today. Hateful online comments were directed at the students in the above stories. In 2012, parents in Boston challenging the pledge insisted on anonymity for fear of reprisal. Boston, a cradle of liberty against the orthodoxy upon which this country was founded to escape.
These are perfect examples of our nation’s fragile commitment to its founding principles and how easy it is to coerce people into betraying them.
Would educators anywhere dare teach a complete history of the pledge, even proposing its recitation in Bellamy’s original version? Not likely, given the fear of inevitable backlash from those who profess faux patriotism or religious piety.
Conservatives have always claimed in a rather obnoxious chest-pounding manner to own patriotism, love of country and the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Yet it is always the conservatives, be they lawmakers or citizens, either by word or by deed, who strive to deny the very freedoms they say they love and, in many cases, have sworn to defend.
So much for the champions of “original intent.”
Why would any woman or girl, or anyone being marginalized by certain destitute factions, pledge allegiance to a flag representing a country seemingly in the process of stripping away their freedoms, indeed their very personhood, and the inalienable rights assumed for all?
What value, then, is our First Amendment and its enormous privileges if we fear expressing an idea or resent those who express it? The irony of denigrating someone for showing independence by not taking a group loyalty oath is astounding.
We all celebrate our freedoms on this day every year, and we all imagine we’d have fought for them at our nation’s birth. But if the First Amendment is to mean anything, then we are going to have to vigorously say no to those who would look to curtail it merely out of offensiveness or misinformed whim.
