Should the Pledge Of Allegiance be mandatory?

religious objections? Is it the "under god" part? I'd be fine with removing that part.

It teaches standing up for 2 minutes and mumbling along with the rest of the group. I have said the Pledge of Allegiance thousands of times and I do not believe I have ever once believed that it taught "conformity and unquestioning allegiance."

There is nothing wrong with having allegiance to the USA. It's a great country filled with great people and every American citizen should have allegiance to it. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

It depends on whether you think the pledge has meaning or not. If you believe that it doesn't have any meaning, that it is something akin to a nursery rhyme that is part of our culture, then there is no harm, but also no benefit. Why would you write a law to mandate teaching a certain nursery rhyme? If you think that a pledge of allegiance in general is a meaningful act, much like swearing an oath, then it should be voluntary and should be done only after educating the oath taker about what they are swearing allegiance to.

I do not see a reason to make a law about this kind of thing... If that is the discussion, I would oppose any actual law making it a requirement. We have so much govt intrusion now, we don't need more.

However, should a school use the Pledge every day, that also should not be shouted down by some loud mouthed parent.

I agree with both statements . I do think that if a child chooses not to say the pledge and is not disruptive about it, that is fine also. A single parent can't make a decision for all the students and the school can't force a child to make a pledge they likely don't understand against their will.

I remember one student in middle school who was from a different country, living in the US. He just sat through the pledge.

There are two religious objections of.Quakers Jehovah's Witnesses and similar groups come from two places (a branch of my family is traditional Quaker and I have some experience with Jehovah's Witnesses)

1) Many people interpret the pledge as a contradiction of Jesus' prohibition of oaths in Matthew 5.

2) For some it is impossible to pledge alliegence to both the Kingdom of God and an earthly government. There are Bible passages to support this including in 1 Timothy.

Arguing about other people's religious beliefs is troublesome. But I do have some experience in this world. These arent social justice warriors ... in fact many churches that object to the pledge are also teaching that women should be submissive to their husbands. These are traditional religious views.

Wikipedia has a brief summary of the history of objections to the pledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Pledge_of_Allegiance

Yeah, but would you say that if your kids had gone through school in, say, Alabama?

That's a fair question. With a tally of 101 to NINE, exactly how will that go?

Nope but it would depend on which school in Alabama say same thing as in MA - yeah believe it or not MA has some more "redneck" areas as well.

Most kids do not even listen to the words - they simply memorize and recite it. In reality the whole thing is a joke - the adults think they are pushing the kids to "respect" their flag/country while doing this - while other adults think like some one here you are forcing kids to just comply. In reality the kids are just mumbling because it is another stupid thing you are supposed to do in school to avoid getting in trouble.

Everyone on either side is making much more of it than the majority of kids even care.

Schools should focus on educating.

Nonsense as a force pledge is one worst then meaningless and second it is against the very ideals of the founders.

I never had for myself have a problem with taking the pledge however I did have a problem with the mandatory listening to the reading of the bible and then taking part in a short prayer that was called for at that time in the NJ school
systems.

If I had thought about it at the time however I would likely had said that a force pledge and or statement is worthless on it face.