Posted by
Andrew Roman on Sunday, November 16, 2008 10:17:02 AM
There is a passionate debate going on in the small Vermont town of Woodbury, regarding the Pledge of Allegiance – but it isn’t what you may think.
No, this isn’t your garden-variety, everyday, atheistic attempt to remove the “offensive recitation” from school, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions before.
This debate has a new twist.
It isn’t a “what” issue … it’s a “where” issue.
Specifically, it concerns whether or not the Pledge of Allegiance can be said in the classrooms of the school or if it needs to be done in a different place within the school, like the gymnasium.
It is a bitter point of contention there.
No, really.
From the Burlington Free Press:
Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate.
“The brouhaha in the Vermont school began in September, when parent Ted Tedesco began circulating petitions calling for its return as a daily practice in the 19th-century schoolhouse, which has 55 children in grades kindergarten through six.
School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.
“We don’t want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or make them feel they’re different,” said Principal Michaela Martin.
That last line is purely stunning. I required a three-man work crew to remove my jaw from the floor after reading it.
“We don’t want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or make them feel they’re different.”
That has to be one of the most patheticly moronic comments I’ve come across in a mighty long time. The absolutely fractured liberal feel-good logic of “offend no one except the majority“ is spectacular to behold when displayed so prominently.
What pure idiocy.
Ms. Martin (if I may speak to her directly), separating a faction of students from others by extracting them from their own classrooms (which is in itself eerily unsettling) to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to their own country is not only frightening, but is, by definition, an act of isolating one group from another. (Please take a “duh” out of petty cash).
Besides, how in the world does reciting the Pledge of Allegiance “isolate” young American children? Doesn’t it, in practice, unite them?
My Lord, what planet is this?
I digress …
Starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.
Martin and School Board Chair Retta Dunlap defended the practice, saying it restored the Pledge to the school as requested, preserved the rights of students who — for political or religious reasons — didn’t want to participate and gave others the opportunity to pledge their allegiance.
“I was happy to have it upstairs. I think it’s important that all the kids share in it together,” said parent Ellen Demers, 42.
My bellybutton is about to cave in. “I was happy to have it upstairs?”
And since when is allegiance to the United States of America a political statement?
“If you’re in a classroom with 15 students and you choose not to say the Pledge, it’s much more obvious than a group setting. When they’re saying it in a group of 55, it’s may not be so obvious. We don’t want to isolate children,” she (Martin) said.
Huh??!??
Let me try this again … If you are specifically rounding up and separating, children from others, i.e.
isolating them, isn’t it reasonable to assume that the children in the Pledge-saying group will know who
isn’t participating and staying behind? Do they not have eyes? Who exactly is being protected from what?
(Tedesco) plans to continue lobbying for classroom recitation.
“There’s no way a heckler’s veto should abridge the constitutional rights of the majority,” he said.
Amen to that.
Talk show host Dennis Prager often recounts a conversation he had with his son immediately after O.J. Simpson was found not guilty of the brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in 1995. When the verdict came in, and O.J. walked away scot-free, Dennis turned to his son and apologized for not handing off to him a better country than the one his parents gave him.
Sometimes, it is difficult to argue with that.
Andrew Roman, Brooklyn, NY