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District: Fla Teacher Suspended For Forcing Jehovah's Witness To Pledge To Flag Back In Class


JerryNumbers

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District: Fla teacher suspended for forcing Jehovah's Witness to pledge to flag back in class

 

When reading this I thought back to my early years in school during the early 50's. If I remember correctly we usually said the pledge of allegiance every morning. Seems I recall singing some patriotic songs as well, like America, Start Spangled Banner & others. Seems I even remember one or two teachers saying a prayer. I don't remember anyone ever refusing to say the pledge, or sing the songs, seems I remember our teacher encouraging some to sing louder.

 

I believe in one grade we had to memorize the pledge saying it in front of our class, I don't remember no one refusing.

 

I feel if anyone had resisted any of the above there would have been consequences, & in the case of memorizing the pledge they would probably received a very bad grade.

 

It nearly seems if today's children in public school can get away with anything.

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The Pledge of Allegiance is a mess.  The teacher was wrong for forcing the JW kids to do it.  As a kid we had a couple in our school who stayed seated while the rest of us participated.  It's a patriotic thing.  Well, supposed to be.

 

Remember that the Pledge was written by a socialist and put in place just after the War of Northern Aggression to get the Southerners to think nationally, not locally.  In my state, nobody but state government buildings fly the state flag, most businesses fly the Stars and Stripes today.

 

On that premise I'm against the pledge.  What good did it do Americans anyway?  Piece by piece they swallowed up socialism and never realized it and today they don't care.   

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The Pledge of Allegiance is a mess.  The teacher was wrong for forcing the JW kids to do it.  As a kid we had a couple in our school who stayed seated while the rest of us participated.  It's a patriotic thing.  Well, supposed to be.

 

Remember that the Pledge was written by a socialist and put in place just after the War of Northern Aggression to get the Southerners to think nationally, not locally.  In my state, nobody but state government buildings fly the state flag, most businesses fly the Stars and Stripes today.

 

On that premise I'm against the pledge.  What good did it do Americans anyway?  Piece by piece they swallowed up socialism and never realized it and today they don't care.   

As well, most Baptists and many other Christians rejected the Pledge, saying it was a form of idolatry, unbiblical.

 

"Under God" was not a part of the Pledge until later. It wasn't until the 1950s when the Pledge was fully accepted in the secular realm and bending to patriotic furvor most churches bowed to the pressure to accept it as well.

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Well, the teacher should not have forced the child to place his hand on his heart.  Requiring the child to stand with the class would have been enough, and has sufficed in the past - although even that was ruled not required by the Court of Appeals.  In 1940, SCOTUS ruled that public schools had the right to force them to do so (and that caused a lot of violence against JWs). That decision was reversed in 1943.  Since it's a government school, the teacher had no legal standing for what was done.

 

We taught our son the pledge, and we said it every day when we homeschooled.  It's ironic to note that so many Christians are against the pledge now simply because the author was proclaimed to be socialist (a little study of the two men involved will show that the term as applied to Bellamy was not what we think of today...).  They are in "good" company: anarchists hate it because America is an imperialistic pig and atheists hate it because it mentions God (I know, I know, it wasn't there originally  - but it wasn't written with the intention of it being said every day by every school child for the rest of time...it was written as part of a 400th anniversary Columbus Day ceremony [and resulted in the Columbus Day holiday].  Bellamy also wanted to re-awaken the American spirit, which was at a low ebb at that time. As it continued to be recited, people decided they wanted "under God" added.  It took a lot of years, but they succeeded).

 

I'm sorry, John, but your accusations don't hold up with any history of the flag that I have read...could you cite your sources of Baptists and many other Christians who considered it a form of idolatry?  I know that now many ("religious" of all stripe...) are pushing that idea, but haven't been able to find any from then...The pledge was fully accepted in the "secular" realm from the time of its introduction.  The 50s saw JWs challenging it in court, and 1954 saw the addition of "Under God" to the pledge (there are those who believe it was added then, even though people had been trying to get it in there for years, because of the cold war, and to differentiate us from the atheism of communism).  That phrase wasn't really challenged until recent years. 

 

Bellamy did consider himself a socialist of sorts (I say of sorts because he was not a subscriber to the idea of socialism as we know it today). He was a Christian (yes, there were Christians who were socialists) who was grieved at the inequality he saw around him.  Specifically in the way in which women and blacks were treated.  THAT is where his focus of socialism was. He loved this country, and he loved the Republican form of government which our founders gave us.  He chose Republic because it distinguished our form of government.  He was promoting the idea of looking at our form of government in the right way - justice and liberty for all, which was what the founders intended.  It was not written to get anyone to think nationally but not locally. He considered a lot of things, and felt that, with all of the struggle this country had gone through - in both wars, not just the War of Northern Aggression - that we were one nation indivisible.  And, really, that is what our founders envisioned.  States who were republic in form of law, in a country - undivided - in a republican form of government. 

 

I do believe that it is common in most states for government buildings to fly the state flag and the US flag, while most businesses fly the American flag.  I don't see anything wrong with that...

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So the teacher is right in violating a student's religious belief?

Would it have been okay if the school made a Catholic child have a hamburger for lunch on Friday and then punished them for not eating it?

 

If you will reread my post you will find I really made no comment about whether the teacher was right or wrong, my comments were about yesterday years when I was in school. So why ask the question as if I stated the teacher was in the right?

 

As for me I was shocked that the teacher made this student do this.

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As well, most Baptists and many other Christians rejected the Pledge, saying it was a form of idolatry, unbiblical.

 

"Under God" was not a part of the Pledge until later. It wasn't until the 1950s when the Pledge was fully accepted in the secular realm and bending to patriotic furvor most churches bowed to the pressure to accept it as well.

 

In the last 10 or so years my mind has changed about saying the pledge. Our country thinks to much of itself, & our citizens do much bragging & boasting about how good we are. Seems we really have nothing to brag or boast about if we will look upon Christ the Savior.

 

Seems we act like some of the infidel nations of the Old Testament Days.

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