Saying the Pledge, inconvenience or basic right?

By admin | June 30, 2010

Major Update, Scroll Down To See How This Fight Has Been Won

It is a shame that in America it has come down to the idea that we have to compromise about saying the Pledge of Elegance in public schools. In Massachusetts they have come to a “compromise”, which you can read about below, but to be honest this “compromise” is just another reason why the Tea Party has grown in popularity…

Those that would look to tare down our country have decided that students that want to show they are loyal to the United States should to go out into the hallway to say the pledge before school starts…

This is yet another example of how the liberals in our nation try to make everyone feel as if they are alone. They know that humans in general do not like to act without knowing that others will do the same, so they want to make you act on your own. This is why they continually tried to play down what was happening with the Tea Party movement when it began… If you thought you were alone you would stop…

So, here is the Tea Party solution to the Pledge of Elegance…

If you don’t want to say the Pledge, stand up, and go into the hallway, and wait for your fellow students to finish thanking this country and those that came before them for the freedoms that they have…

Place the inconvenience on those that want to change our country, not on those that want to preserve what has been created…

Massachusetts School Offers to Allow Pledge of Allegiance — but Not in Class
By Todd Starnes
Published June 29, 2010| FOXNews.com

Student Sean Harrington appears to have won his fight to bring the Pledge of Allegiance back into his Massachusetts high school — except the principal’s proposed solution leaves the daily honor to the nation’s flag literally hanging in the hall.

Charles Skidmore, principal of Arlington High School in Arlington, Mass., has offered to allow students to recite the pledge before school begins — but in the school’s foyer and not in the classrooms, as 17-year-old Harrington had hoped.

Kathleen Bodie, Arlington superintendent of schools, told Fox News Radio that “The principal wanted to be very respectful about the pledge and be sensitive to the Supreme Court ruling that students are not forced to say the pledge. He wanted to be sensitive to the diverse group of students we have.”

Bodie said there has been reluctance to put the district’s teachers in a position of reciting the pledge, and she acknowledged that some have raised concerns about its inclusion of the words “under God.”

“I don’t know if it’s all about ‘under God,’ but that is certainly an aspect of it,” she said.

She said the pledge is voluntarily recited in the district’s elementary and middle schools, but it hasn’t been recited at the high school in decades.

It is unclear whether Harrington, who led the fight to bring the pledge back to the school, will be satisfied with the compromise of having it recited in the foyer, and not in class. When he was a freshman, he noticed that there were no American flags in the classrooms, and he enlisted the aid of his fellow students to get them installed. He also began his fight to have students voluntarily recite the pledge.

Harrington recently presented school officials with a petition signed by 700 people, along with letters of support from lawmakers including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But the request to have the pledge recited failed when the committee’s vote ended in a 3-3 tie.

“I was really heartbroken,” Harrington told Fox News Radio. “It’s hard to think that something so traditional in American society was turned down.”

His fight has received quite a bit of support from the community. “When I was going to school, it was an honor and a privilege to pledge allegiance to the flag,” Francis De Guglielmo, 55, told the Arlington Patch. He called the ban an “absolute travesty” and a “disgrace.”

Harrington, who will be a senior in the fall, told Fox News Radio: “I’m not a person who quits and I don’t back down. It’s a very righteous cause and needs to be followed through until the end.”

Some committee members voiced concerns about forcing people to do something that might violate their beliefs – including religious beliefs. Among the no-votes was committee member Leba Heigham.

“Patriotism is a very personal thing for all of us, but I do not think it is in the school committee’s best interest to mandate that any of our employees recite the pledge,” she told the Patch.

But Harrington stressed that he was seeking a voluntary recitation.

“If we can’t find one teacher who is willing to say the pledge, then the system we have is cracked,” he told FOX News Radio, noting that a number of teachers signed his petition.

He said the school’s ban on the pledge sent the wrong message. “It tells me that we’ve basically cast aside what our country is founded on,” he said. “It’s saying that we don’t really care, and it’s sad.”

Stand up in your own schools, if you work in the public sector, i.e. for your local city, county, state, or federal government ask, no begin demanding that you begin the work day with the pledge…

Will you be that person, the one asking for more, the odd ball? Yes, but will you be helping to spread the belief in your own country, one of shared values, of shared goal, of a shared understanding, that our country is greater than any other than has ever existed…

Yes you will, but rest assured you will not be alone, you will share that ground with every patriot that has come before you, from the revolutionary soldier to the last veteran to solute our nations flag…

You will be in good company…

Major Update Below

After a lot of pressure from people all over the counrty and in Massachusetts itself I am proud to announce that conservatives have won again, the students will not only be allowed to say the pledge each day, but will be able to do so in the class room, as I had suggested originally in this post, rather than out in the hallway. This is a great victory…

Read the story below…

New Policy Allows Pledge of Allegiance at Massachusetts School District
from Fox News

Students at Massachusetts high schools in Arlington can rejoice — they’ll be allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance this fall.

Nearly two months after deadlocking on a proposal by senior Sean Harrington, the Arlington Public School Committee unanimously approved a new pledge policy on Tuesday night that allows principals at each school to determine how the pledge will be recited each day.

“Yes, the policy has been changed,” Arlington High School Principal Charles Skidmore told FoxNews.com in an email. “All principals in the district must ensure that the Pledge of Allegiance is said every school day in all classrooms.”

In June, Harrington appeared to have won his fight to bring the Pledge of Allegiance back into Arlington High School, but Skidmore, offered to allow students to recite the pledge before school begins and in the school’s foyer instead of inside the classrooms, as 17-year-old Harrington had hoped.

Skidmore now says he’s pleased with the new policy and especially the process that led up to it.

“As a result of the controversy, I heard from many people both across the country and in our community who wanted the Pledge restored to our school. That’s all I was ever looking for on this issue — widespread community buy-in so that students would feel that they wanted to say the Pledge, not just that they had to,” he said.

No student, teacher or administrator will be required to participate in a recitation, an Arlington High School official confirmed to FoxNews.com.

Harrington presented school officials with a petition signed by 700 people, along with letters of support from lawmakers including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. But the request to have the pledge recited failed when the committee’s vote ended in a 3-3 tie.

“I was really heartbroken,” Harrington told Fox News Radio
in June. “It’s hard to think that something so traditional in American society was turned down.”

Harrington, who could not be immediately reached for comment on Wednesday, said months ago that he did not intend to stop pushing for the Pledge of Allegiance until it was allowed in his classrooms.

“I’m not a person who quits and I don’t back down,” Harrington said. “It’s a very righteous cause and needs to be followed through until the end.”