Pledge issue already has people taking sides
Arguments set for February before Supreme Court Staff Writer Last update: 29 October 2003 |
HOLLY HILL -- Some of the words are big. Some are hard to
understand. And sometimes, if you listen closely to the morning recitation
in Ronda McCord's first-grade classroom at Holly Hill Elementary School,
you'll hear a word that doesn't quite seem to belong.
"But it's not the store Publix," says Ayla Ward, 7, during a recent
post-pledge interview. "It means something else.
"I don't know what," she admits.
Allegiance is also hard explain. As is indivisible, which sounds a lot
like invisible to first-grade ears.
And then there's "justice for all," which 6-year-old Darien Zahn says
he's pretty sure has something to do with Superman.
But the phrase "under God" isn't confusing at all to the first-graders.
"It means he's on top of us, and we're under," says Marissa Harris, 6,
who, like her classmates -- and most other children in public schools
across the country -- learn the pledge by rote in kindergarten and can
expect to recite it every day in school until they graduate.
Whether they'll continue to say the "under God" phrase, however, is
currently up in the air.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to rule on whether
public schools are violating the Constitution by requiring teachers to
lead a pledge that a father in California contends crosses the line
between church and state.
Though the case won't be argued until February, the issue already has
people taking sides.
"The majority believes in some form of God," says Rich Bieser of New
Smyrna Beach, who's the Volusia, Flagler and Putnam counties district
commander of the American Legion, which has taken a strong stance in favor
of keeping the phrase. "It would hurt the pledge" to remove those words,
he contends. "I would hope the Supreme Court would leave it alone. . . . I
think kids enjoy the pledge the way it is," says Bieser, 53, who's retired
from the U.S. Air Force.
"I personally believe they should take (the phrase) out," counters
Louis Caponi, 74, of Port Orange, a retired history teacher who is part of
the fledgling Volusia County chapter of the American Civil Liberties
Union.
The majority may want it to stay, he concedes. But the Founding Fathers
worried about the "tyranny of the majority" trampling the rights of those
in the minority, according to Caponi, who still vividly remembers what it
felt like to be in the minority as a child.
Though Catholic, he -- along with all his classmates -- was taught the
Protestant version of the Lord's Prayer at his public elementary school in
Long Island. Which got him into very big trouble with an irate nun, he
recalls with a chuckle, after he made the mistake of repeating the version
he learned in school in church.
The pledge, of course, is not a prayer. And it didn't include the words
"under God" until 1954 when they were added "as an anti-Communist
statement" during the McCarthy era, notes Len Lempel, a history professor
at Daytona Beach Community College.
"Given the nature of the Supreme Court, I would be very surprised if
they changed anything," Lempel says. "I would be shocked if they did." But
the phrase "seems inappropriate to me since it makes a connection between
God and patriotism" and "patriotism doesn't necessarily have anything to
do with God." Religion, he adds, "is a very private matter. . . . The
government should stay out of it."
Whichever way the court rules, the case could prove to be an
educational "current events issue," says Jason Caros, district social
studies specialist for Volusia County Schools. It will provide an
opportunity for high school teachers to bring up "primary source
documents" like the Constitution and "let the kids synthesize and analyze
and come to their own conclusions," he says.
As for first-graders, they've still got plenty of time before anyone
expects them to fully understand the meaning and implications of the words
they say every morning in school with their hands pressed over their
hearts.
Ayla, though, is pretty sure she's got most of the pledge figured out.
"God made us to be free," says the 7-year-old. And the word liberty, in
the pledge, means "nobody gets to tell us what to be when we grow up. When
I grow up," she concludes, "I want to be a supermodel."
· Bellamy's pledge was first recited at public schools nationwide
during flag ceremonies marking the 400th anniversary of Christopher
Columbus' discovery of America.
· The original words were: "I pledge allegiance to my flag and the
republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all."
· By 1924, the words "my flag" were changed to "the flag of the United
States of America."
· The pledge was adopted by Congress in 1942. The next year, the
Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not compel students to
recite it.
· Congress added the words "under God" in 1954.
SOURCE: "The Pledge of Allegiance A Short History" by Dr. John W.
Baer
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