did anyone else from the USA grow up being forced to say the pledge to the flag in school?

im 20 for reference. ever since i was a kid, up until hs, we were forced every morning to stand, look at the flag and hold our hearts and say:

"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"

i didnt stand a single time because i disagreed with being forced, and i was berated by the teacher in front of everyone, and he threatened to kick me out of class if i ever did it again. i was about 11-12 then, it was 2015.

cloudless,
@cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

As an outsider, I find it very cultish to pledge to a piece of cloth.

CoWizard,

It's very strange. It's a very doublethink cult. The same people who worship the flag will vote to not give health benefits to 9/11 first responders. Those same people will then use american flag napkins.

euphoria,
euphoria avatar

no doubt, i 100% find it very cult-like and disgusting, and i had realized it then too.

FiendishFork,

Since I became an adult I always found it kind of strange. I did not realize just how strange it was until I dropped my son off at Pre-K a little late and walked in to a whole class of 4 year olds hands on hearts mumbling through the pledge. It was sooo eerie.

Unaware7013,

It absolutely is, doubly so because of the added and unneeded "under god" bs that gets shoved into everything...

euphoria,
euphoria avatar

that was a huge issue i had with it too, but i omitted that so i didnt seem like an edgy tween atheist (though its a 100% valid criticism that i should have included).

BraveSirZaphod,
BraveSirZaphod avatar

That's actually relatively recent, which is way, given the meter of the poem, it feels a little shoe-horned in. It was.

I wanna say it was in the 60s or so? Essentially as a way to promote a devout Christian image of America to contrast against the godless Soviets.

BrerChicken,

The pledge was written, by a minister in 1891 without the “under God” part. It was added by Congress in 1954 in the midst of Macarthyism and the Red Scare. In 2002 an appeals court said that forcing public school students to recite it was went against the separation of Church and State, and it was but stayed. The Supreme Court overturned that in 2004, but I think a lot of schools may have dropped it then.

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

As a genX-er, I grew up having to say it through elementary and middle school. I quit participating in the mid ‘80s. We were forced to attend John Birch Society events in school hat would talk about how horrible Russia was and how they fed propaganda to the kids from an early age. Reagan would always talk about all the horrible things USSR would do with their childhood propaganda too. I realized right away that everything the school was doing was the same thing.

I got labeled as a bad kid. Not Christian enough and not obedient enough.

acronymesis,
acronymesis avatar

We were forced to attend John Birch Society events in school

Damn, that sounds unconstitutional as hell. I imagine you went to some time of Christian private school?

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

Nope, public school

acronymesis,
acronymesis avatar

Well, then, it was definitely unconstitutional as hell!! Just brazen indoctrination from on a hilarious/terrifying level...

Remillard,
Remillard avatar

Also Gen X (1971) and while I remember it in first grade (so this would have been around 1976-77) I don't think it continued much past 1st grade. MAYBE 2nd. So I lucked out there I suppose. I cannot imagine getting indoctrinated by JBS though. I'm sure it would have gone down well in a lot of the midwest where I grew up, but I suppose I also lucked out there in that the school board and staff were pretty apolitical when it came to school structure.

1chemistdown,
1chemistdown avatar

The irony, to me, is that town is liberal now. The surrounding county is super maga but the city is all hippie liberal. But as a child, this Colorado town was Texas red. Don’t spend money on education because we need a better high school football stadium type of town.

Sorchist,

From the Pledge of Allegiance to in-school John Birch society events is a hell of an acceleration. Holy shit.

acronymesis,
acronymesis avatar

Quite the whiplash indeed!

Plus_a_Grain_of_Salt,

Holyshit, I’ve heard stories, but hearing your firsthand account sounds so dystopian.

daredevil,
daredevil avatar

I did not enjoy being forced to say this in school, to say the least.

Girlparts,
Girlparts avatar

I attended a school board meeting recently and they asked everyone stand and recite before the meeting would begin. I got so many dirty looks for refusing.

To watch a room full of adults look and pledge to a flag was comical and disturbing

exohuman, (edited )
exohuman avatar

I am twice your age and we did it for a while then the schools just stopped. The cult I was in didn’t like the pledge though so I would just stand and murmur certain parts (like “under god”) to avoid being punished.

kool_newt,

Pretty sure everyone did.

RheingoldRiver,

Good for you OP! I stopped standing to pledge around when I was maybe 10 or 11, when I learned it was illegal to make standing for it mandatory & about how the words 'under God' were added later and the pledge violated separation of church and state. I come from a very liberal area and all my teachers were quite proud of me I think, especially my 6th-grade teacher. But a lot of my classmates didn't understand and I got bullied a lot for it. But I refused to do it. My mom was teaching public policy so....that probably influenced it a lot haha

albinanigans,
albinanigans avatar

Christ, I'm almost 40 and they're still doing that?!

SuburbanHaikuist, (edited )
SuburbanHaikuist avatar

I went to elementary school in the late 60s and early 70s and yes, we said the pledge every day. I didn't think anything about it back then.

As a Boy Scout in the mid 70s, we said the pledge at every meeting. Again, I gave it no thought.

In the 90s, I was in a Ham Radio club and they said it before every meeting. I found it odd, but went along with them.

In the last few years, I joined the local HOG (Harley Owners Group) chapter and they said it before every meeting. Now I'm beginning to question why, as an adult in a seemingly innocuous club, am I supposed to pledge my allegiance to the flag. This isn't the military, there's no reason for it.

If you're wanting me to say the pledge to the flag, you're just wanting me to show my patriotism and that word is about as vile to me now as a racial slur.

If I ever find myself in an organization that wants me to stand and recite the pledge, I'll be walking out the door.

HRDS_654, (edited )

To make it worse, I found out not too long ago that the version they made me say wasn’t even the original. “Under God” did not exist in the original version of the pledge.

EDIT: For those that were curious, apparently it was added in 1954 under Dwight Eisenhower.

IcyCockatoo,
IcyCockatoo avatar

This is still done in public schools in Texas, and they have the kids pledge allegiance to the Texas flag too.

tiredofsametab,

At least through elementary school, yes. I can't recall for middle school if we did it every day or not.

Looking at it now in my 40s, I always think it feels like some sort of weird brainwash-y, cult-like behavior.

justlookingfordragon,
@justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world avatar

As a German, this entire things feels always so bizarre to me. If a teacher “over here” would try and make their students do something similar for the German flag, said teacher would get kicked out of the faculty pretty quickly.

The same goes for religion by the way. While we did have classes about religion for a while (Katholischer / Evangelischer Religionsunterricht), the teachers were more or less just explaining what certain passages of the Bible meant, how they had been misinterpreted in the past, what is similar or different between certain religions etc. but not even they were allowed to make their students actually pray.

PS: and those were optional classes by the way. If your parents didn’t want you to attend, you didn’t attend. No discussion.

OutrageousUmpire,

I thought everyone did. I did for sure. I know in Texas they say the Texas pledge to the Texas flag as well (or at least they did 20 years ago).

BrerChicken,

I’m 44 and grew up in Miami. We had the regular southern patriotism mixed with the Cubans who were very friggin thankful to be living in the US (including my family!) So you better believe we all said it! But the way I saw it, my parents and grandparents left Cuba so that we wouldn’t have to do that kinda of things in school. I love my country, but it’s crazy to put your hands over your heart and pledge every single morning, not to mention that under God part that was added only a couple of decades before I even started to say it.

As a big fan of Groenig’s “Life in Hell” comic strip, I just started saying one of his versions:

I plead alignment to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow, and to the republicans, for which they scam: one nacho, underpants with licorice and jugs of wine for owls.

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