A group of students in Boulder, Colorado walked out of school during the pledge of allegiance this past Thursday. In an email to Rocky Mountain News, the president of the Student Worker club at Boulder High School wrote that the protesting students were concerned that the pledge takes away from school time and that the phrase “one nation, under God” violates the separation of church and state. “Boulder High has a highly diverse population, not all of whom believe in God, or One God,” she wrote.
Once outside, an alternate pledge written by a Boulder High senior was read to the group:
“I pledge allegiance to the flag and my constitutional rights with which it comes. And to the diversity, in which our nation stands, one nation, part of one planet, with liberty, freedom, choice and justice for all.”
Various news sources offer conflicting accounts of the number of students participating in the walk-out, with the majority reporting fifty students physically leaving the building and as many as a hundred watching from the inside.
The incident received a good deal of local media attention and was mentioned at least twice on the Fox News Channel — first under the Fox News Alert banner “The War on the Pledge of Allegiance,” then as a conversation topic on The O Reilly Factor.
My Reaction
Ultimately, I appreciate the students’ activism and applaud their principal, Bud Jenkins, for his attitude:
“We’re proud of the kids,” Jenkins added. “If they don’t like something, they’re following a democratic process of telling the community that they don’t like it.
But I would not have participatd in their demonstration.
Don’t get me wrong. I have been silently abstaining from saying the pledge since High School. I never said it as an Eagle Scout, and I certainly don’t say it now when I’m teaching. I don’t stand up while the pledge is being recited nor do I put my hand on my heart. I don’t even stop what I’m doing to acknowledge that it is being broadcast. When it was forced upon the students in the cafeteria at School 69 (where I spent 3 months student teaching) by the breakfast-room monitor (who was also my cooperating teacher,) I stayed in the adjacent teacher’s lounge until it was over as to not draw attention away from her strict law-and-order.
Why don’t I do it? It’s complicated. Most of the debate these days is on the words “Under God,” and though I don’t agree that the words “under god” should be present in the pledge, for me the real issue lies in the act of saying the pledge itself. I do not feel comfortable with young children being coerced — or even just encouraged — to participate in a daily loyalty oath to their country, especially if they don’t yet know what it means. I’m sure I’ll blog more about it later.
So, an alternate pledge to the flag would not have excited me;I would have been much more excited to participate in a mass silent demonstration outside, and would have been happy to continue my silent protest alone.
