Forced allegiance: is it worth having?
From the Classroom Vignettes file:
A teacher with Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District was placed on paid administrative leave following an alleged incident at the middle school, the school district said Thursday. CBS Denver confirmed the Lafayette Police Department is investigating reports that teacher allegedly assaulted a student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Karen Smith, Angevine’s physical education teacher, was placed on leave Thursday.
This again. Football players MUST stand up with their hands on their chests (one hand per player) when a certain song is sung. God MUST be namechecked whenever a politician comments on an outburst of violence. Students MUST swear fealty to a piece of cloth and to God at the start of every school day. All this MUST be mandatory or everything will rot and fall off and die.
Except of course that none of that is true, but it’s treated as if it were true.
God is an oblong leather cylinder (with an absurd pale overcomb) and MUST be adored by all.
Whether it’s a football or not.
At least there is some resistance still. But why the paid leave, all of a sudden?
My son was forced to say the pledge by a teacher who admitted to him that he couldn’t force him to say the pledge – then went on to make it very blatant (in a sort-of-pretending-to-be-subtle sort of way) that it would not be likely a student would pass his class without standing for the pledge.
I had at the time no where I could turn for help. I did not know the FFRF existed; the ACLU was overworked and never got back to me; my family was on the side of the teacher. Eventually, my son just stood and forced himself to say a pledge he didn’t believe. Which, if said teacher were honest with himself, made a mockery of the very pledge to which he was so devoted.
At least the teacher never attacked him.
Ugh, god. “Submit to the conditioning or else!!”
It’s fucking weird, this idea of taking the pledge every day. Some people seem unable to distinguish between pledge and prayer.
Forced allegiance is not allegiance. Oaths issued under duress are empty and meaningless, and put no obligations whatsoever on the person who has been pressured into issuing them.
Ask me to recite your bullshit under a threat? Sure thing boss, I’ll say whatever you want. I have zero problems with that. But you can’t make me mean it, or think that it’s not bullshit. In fact, I’ll likely think it’s even more bullshit than I did before.
One guy found out the pastor was hard of hearing, so when he had to recite stuff for his compulsive confirmation he got away with mumbling “Up a staircase, down a staircase” in church. Not that he really had faith in those words, or the actual ritual for that matter. He died a heathen some 50 years later.
No getting away from that.
Any agreement or contract made under duress is in principle void, but duress can enforce it anyway of course. We still don’t love the bully.