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Jewish World Review July 1, 2010 / 19 Tamuz 5770 Another Public School Travesty in MA By Arnold Ahlert
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Just when you think a state where a school board voted to give condoms to elementary school kids (unbeknownst to their parents) had scraped the bottom of the ideological barrel, Massachusetts has stooped even further: the town of Arlington school committee has rejected a request to allow students to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The reason given? According to the arlintonpatch.com, educators there "are concerned that it would be hard to find teachers willing to recite it."
"Patriotism is a very personal thing for all of us, but I do not think it is in the school committee's best interest to mandate that any of our employees recite the pledge," said committee member Leba Heigham, one of the board members who voted to reject the pledge.
Ms. Heigham is either a dim bulb or a liar. No one was "mandating" anything. The vote was the result of 17-year-old student Sean Harrington's request--along with a petition signed by 700 people, including two United States Senators, John Kerry and Joe Lieberman--to allow students to say the pledge, not force them to do it.
Yet even a voluntarily recited oath of allegiance to America was a bridge too far. Despite a 3-3 vote, the request was rejected. Apparently a tie equals a win--for ideological bankruptcy.
One has to wonder: is there a tipping point where a majority of Americans begin to wake up and fight back against the hijacking of the public school system by leftist jackboots intent on brain-washing our children?
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the problem here. We now have an American school board on the record with the idea that, among the entire faculty of an American high school, it would be "hard to find" teachers willing to pledge their allegiance to their own country.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until enough people listen: the public school system is Ground Zero in the fight for the nation's soul. It is a fight currently being won hands down by the American left, whose political ideologues will stoop to anything to maintain their grip on power.
Make no mistake: the last thing these people want is your child expressing allegiance to a country they consider beneath contempt. For the American left, all the plusses and minuses of the American experience come down on the minus side of the ledger. For example, better to tell school children this country was built by slave labor, than to tell them America was the second country in the history of the world to abolish it. Better to tell them that corporations are inherently evil than tell them many of those same corporations have given us the highest standard of living in the world. Better to make them believe that patriotism is "suspect," not something to be proud of.
And just so people can have a clearer picture, here is what the Arlington school board believes teachers are "unwilling" to recite:
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation, under G0d, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All."
With the possible exception of "under G0d," what in the world do liberals find problematic here? Allegiance? Indivisibility? Liberty? Justice for All?
Americans are rightly concerned with the dismal state of our government. But for some unfathomable reason many of them can't--or can be bothered--connecting the dots between the quality of our representatives, the quality of our voting and the total lack of quality in a thoroughly compromised public school system. Too many Americans don't realize our public schools have literally become laboratories of liberal/socialist propaganda.
As I write this, there's been an update: the school's principal, Charles Skidmore, has offered a "compromise: "students who want to can recite the pledge, but only before school begins--and only in the school's foyer, not the classrooms.
Do you get the underlying sense of contempt here? The Pledge of Allegiance isn't "good enough" to merit school time or a classroom setting. Take it in the hall, and don't cut into the time we spend "educating" school kids.
Why the hallway?
Kathleen Bodie, Arlington superintendent of schools: "The principal wanted to be very respectful about the pledge and be sensitive to the Supreme Court ruling that students are not forced to say the pledge. He wanted to be sensitive to the diverse group of students we have."
In other words, "diversity" equals accommodation, not to mainstream Americans and their values, but to those who might find those values objectionable. If this sort of thinking sounds familiar that's because it's the same sort of "celebrate our differences" nonsense that has completely contaminated our immigration philosophy. America is now expected to accommodate the values of those who come here instead of expecting them to assimilate our culture and our customs.
In this setting that means one thing: if a single student or teacher decides their sensibilities are offended by the Pledge, everyone else must submit to those sensibilities. There's another term for that sort of thinking as well:
Tyranny of the minority.
It is no secret that the overwhelming majority of Americans are either conservative or independent. So why do we continue to allow a tyranny of liberal philosophy to dominate our school system? Why do Americans continue to put up with a school system so contaminated by liberal bias that students wishing to express their belief in liberty, freedom and justice for all are sent to the foyer as a "compromise." How is it possible that an American public school is so ideologically compromised that the faculty isn't expressing outrage over this calculated slight?
17-year-old Sean Harrington has the answer: "If we can't find one teacher who is willing to say the pledge, then the system we have is cracked. It tells me that we've basically cast aside what our country is founded on. It's saying that we don't really care, and it's sad."
One more time: public schools are the primary battleground for the nation's soul. Either we're going to turn out future Americans who truly understand the greatness of American exceptionalism, or we're going to keep turning out kids for whom America is "just another country," no better or worse than any other, where allegiance is "optional," and patriotism is relegated to off-hours in hallways so it doesn't "offend" anyone.
Have you had enough yet?
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