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.
One nation
invisible?
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Holly Hill Elementary School
first-grader Ayla Ward, 7, recites the Pledge of Allegiance in her
own fashion, citing allegiance "to Publix" rather than "to the
Republic." Ayla is joined by classmates Amber Miller, left, and
Michael Archely, center. Ayla gives assurance that she knows when
she says "Publix" it's not the store.
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Like Publix, for example. As in:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to
Publix, for which it stands . . ."
"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."
donna.callea@news-jrnl.com
