West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette
Oh, America. You’re so confused.
A Florida student is facing misdemeanor charges after a confrontation with his teacher that began with his refusal to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and escalated into what officials described as disruptive behavior.
The student, a sixth-grader at Lawton Chiles Middle Academy in Lakeland, Fla., east of Tampa, refused to stand for the pledge in the Feb. 4 incident, telling the teacher that he thinks the flag and the national anthem are “racist” against black people, according to an affidavit. The teacher then had what appeared to be a contentious exchange with the boy.
Ok stop right there. The teacher had no business having any kind of exchange with the boy, because forced loyalty oaths are a fascist thing, not a liberal democracy thing.
People recite an oath when they become new citizens. That’s ok, that makes sense. They recite it once. They can go on reciting it as much as they like, of course, but it’s required only the once. People swear to things in court; that too makes sense, and has reasonable limits. Ordering children to swear a loyalty oath in school every single day is grotesque and intrusive and disgusting. It shouldn’t happen at all, but if it does happen (as it unfortunately does here) then children should have every right to abstain, period end of story. On paper they do have that right, because of a court ruling – so this teacher should have left the boy alone.
If living in the United States is “so bad,” why not go to another place to live? substitute teacher Ana Alvarez asked the student, according to a handwritten statement from her.
“They brought me here,” the boy replied.
Alvarez responded by saying, “Well you can always go back, because I came here from Cuba, and the day I feel I’m not welcome here anymore, I would find another place to live.” She then called the school office, as she did not want to keep dealing with the student, according to the statement.
That’s her experience, and that’s fine, but it’s not part of her job to force it on the students.
Officials said the situation escalated. The student yelled at the administrative dean and a school resource officer with the Lakeland Police Department after they came to the classroom, accusing them of being racist and repeatedly refusing to leave the room.
“Suspend me! I don’t care. This school is racist,” the student, who is black, told the dean as he walked out of the classroom with his backpack, according to the affidavit.
I can’t help feeling a lot of sympathy for that kid – he shouldn’t be forced to recite a very substantive loyalty oath that he doesn’t believe in, and he shouldn’t be punished or hassled for refusing to recite it. Why wouldn’t he yell at them when he wasn’t doing anything wrong?
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida issued a rebuke in the wake of the controversy. “This is outrageous. Students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter the schoolhouse gates,” the group said on Twitter. “This is a prime example of the over-policing of Black students in school.”
The 11-year-old boy’s mother, Dhakira Talbot, was not immediately available for comment Sunday. But she told Bay News 9 that the teacher was wrong and that the school overstepped its authority by punishing her son, who was taken to a juvenile detention center and suspended for three days after the incident.
The school and the police say it’s not because of the pledge, it’s because of how he reacted to being thrown out of class over the pledge. Yeeeeeah that’s a distinction without a difference, folks.
In a statement Monday, Polk County Public Schools said the resource officer, not school officials, made the decision to arrest the student.
The school district said that students are not required to participate in reciting the pledge. In fact, the Supreme Court ruled in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that schools cannot require students to salute the flag or recite the pledge, citing First Amendment rights.
But the substitute teacher was not aware that students are not required to recite the pledge, the school district said, adding that officials will look at improving training for substitute teachers and that Alvarez no longer works in the district.
Oh ffs – really? Schools make kids say that shit every single day but they don’t manage to tell teachers that the kids have a legal right to refuse?
What a pathetic mess.
That’s hard to believe. I know schools sometimes bring in people as substitutes that have fewer credentials than they should have, but really? This has been a thing for a long time. I went through a situation with my son 20 years ago when his history teacher told him “I can’t make you say the pledge, but I can refuse to help you succeed if you don’t show respect for me and my military services”. Uh, no he can’t. He is required as part of his job to make every effort to help the children succeed, and to treat them all the same, without discrimination because someone does not believe the way he does.
My son refused to say the pledge for several reasons – the racism was one, but Under God was another. The teacher picked on that one – how dare he fail to respect our country’s God? That was disrespecting veterans. Huh, what? Maybe he was respecting veterans who didn’t believe in God, and didn’t want to be forced to be respected by the daily mouthing of words they didn’t believe in.
In the end, my son recited the pledge. With no support system, and no knowledge at the time of what support systems existed (like, FFRF. I was aware of the ACLU, but I had little to no luck with an agency that for some reason deemed itself to busy to even return calls), I was unable to make the school comply. And my father yelled at my son for a long time about failure to salute. My son does love his grandfather, and sullenly complied.
Ugh, god, that’s all so infuriating. The “pledge” itself is disgusting for several reasons, “under God” definitely one of them, and then it’s such an opportunity for bullying and the bullying is itself so disgusting.
I can believe that the sub didn’t know the rules, actually. Here’s a scenario:
1: Young teacher only works in religious or other private school for years, after getting the usual degrees and certifications for her state. During this period, she only has to worry about the school’s rules–they get away with tons of shit the publics are at least technically not allowed to do.
2: She then leaves the job for some period of time. Maybe she got married/had a kid, maybe she found a better-paying non-teaching job, whatever.
3: At some more advanced age, she then opts to re-enter the workforce as a substitute. Maybe she lost her better-paying job, maybe she’s looking for semi-retirement, or maybe her kids are now teenagers and she doesn’t feel the need to be at home as much anymore, but like the flexibility of subbing (often, subs are just given a number they call in to get an assignment if they want, on any given day).
Of course, now we have someone whose last exposure to the official rules was a decade or more ago, and then only during her training period. Her practical, day-to-day experience is from a job with different rules–but on paper, she seems to be perfectly qualified for the job. And since subs often work in half a dozen different districts, there’s no specific training for any of them.
Of course, none of that excuses the office staff, particularly the dean, for not gently but firmly correcting the substitute, telling the student that he is correct, he does not have to recite the Pledge, and moving on. This is where you find the difference between ‘honest error’ and fascist mindset–how the school responds to a challenge when authority has been misapplied.
America in general is anomalously patriotic, and I can’t help but think that the steady drip of pledging the oath every day throughout their entire time at school, along with the ubiquitous National Anthem at every sporting event and the Stars and Stripes draping every other building, car, baseball cap, and so-on has had a successful brainwashing effect on the populace.
It really is facism-lite.
Subs have very different requirements in different states. Some are shockingly low, basically high school diploma and willingness to babysit a classroom (pass out assignments for them to work on quietly and send anyone being disruptive to the principal).
So I can totally believe this sub was that ignorant. Couple that with being alert for potential troublemakers (subs know they’ll be eaten alive if they show weakness), and this situation starts.
I don’t have the words to describe how creepy I find this mandatory flag-saluting and pledge-reciting. It’s just so… North Korea.
Catwhisperer – it’s even worse when it’s combined with another thing they are not allowed to force kids to do – prayer. I moved to Oklahoma when I was 10, which was after all the decisions about prayer/devotionals. Prior to that, I probably saluted the flag at assemblies and stuff, but I don’t remember having daily flag salutes in the classroom.
Once in Oklahoma, we had daily flag salutes (mandatory); daily prayer (mandatory); and daily devotionals (mandatory). Of course, being 10 and the child of fundamentalist parents, I didn’t know this was illegal. I probably wouldn’t have said anything if I had, cause I was a scared kid – scared of my family, scared of my teachers, scared of my classmates – because everyone found out I was less strong than they were.
What was even worse was that we had to lead the mandatory prayer at least one week out of the school year. When my week came, I duly composed my prayer, went to school, and led the students in prayer. My teacher chastised me for “doing it wrong”. My teacher was Southern Baptist. I was not. I can’t tell you to this day what was wrong with my prayer; it didn’t sound that different from the one she composed for me, and as a kid I would not have gotten the subtle differences her dogmatic ear would have caught.
That was embarrassing and horrifying, and also marked me early on as different (if my different accent, different clothes, and simply not having gone through the first four grades with the other students hadn’t already done that). In a town where the first thing they ask the new kid is “what church do you go to?”, calling a student out in front of the class for having the “wrong” religion is worse than bad.
The schools need to get out of the patriotism business, and out of the religion business. They need to focus on education and leave those other things outside the classroom.
Iknklast – that just sounds hideous. I remember when a girl in school came back from a year-long student exchange in the U.S. and we all had a hard time believing the stories of high school life. Of course, as the German kid, she was exempt from the daily pledge and flag saluting, but she said it was incredibly disturbing to be in a room full of people being so enthusiastically fascist. She also said it was disturbing how uncomfortable she felt at not being part of it, which is quite something coming from the kind of person who, how shall I put this, had a unique and individual style.
Catwhisperer – being German made her exempt? Wow. Where I come from, they would have doubled down on that kid. Not an American means anti-American unless they pray and pledge, pledge and pray.
And technically, all American kids are exempt if they wish to be, because, well, that is the law. My school was breaking the law. I had moved to Oklahoma from Maine, where they were following the law. But Oklahoma didn’t like the law, so they ignored it. Just like they do with global warming. It’s Oklahoma. It’s magic. Somehow.