I'm 50, and yes. Except in HS, I sat and dared them to do something about it. My school knew how to pick their battles, they never disciplined me for my acts of civil disobedience (I also protested the dress code when they enacted one).
Millennial here. I remember doing this in elementary school in the 90s. I moved in 3rd grade from a place that didn't do it, so it was super weird to me coming in as an outsider.
Yes, I did. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but as an adult is seems weird, and like someone else said cultish. Yet, I am conflicted, because one of my concerns about the USA is increasing partisanship driven diverging cultures. Having kids say the pledge of allegiance is generally unoffensive, especially when compared to our ongoing culture wars.
I pledge my cheeses to the hag
of the untied snakes of harmonica
And to my public, the Richard Stans
One nation, under Zod, invisible
With liver, tea, and just us for all
It was tacked on in the 50s (note how it kinda messes with the cadence) because of godless commies. There have been other little tweaks as well, some making it worse (e.g. "under god") and some better (abandoning the, herrrm, "Roman" salute). While always a bit weirdly nationalistic, the core of the modern pledge was written by a Christian Socialist and replaced one that was worse and more explicitly religious.
I guess it's not so weird that it exists and I assume many countries have some sort of boilerplate loyalty oath they can bust out as needed, but it's pretty messed up that it's mandatory for kids on a daily basis and fetishizes the flag as an object. I am quite fond of my country, and I think there are a lot of worse places to live, but our history is pretty messed up and our views on what exactly constitutes freedom and democracy are not unquestionable just because some clever provincial elites came up with a halfway workable system in the late 1700s. I suppose it's marginally better to build a national cult out of institutions and symbols than individuals, but it's still a terrible idea to treat patriotism like religious dogma.
I would never say forced - it's just normal practice, but abstention happened. Shared experience is a powerful uniting factor. Reinforced daily, even moreso. Every student remembered the Pledge itself and remembers seeing every other student doing it - regardless of race, creed, or color. We were all Americans. I remember the first times I saw someone not taking part, the first, it was for religious reasons; his parents were part of a religious group that wouldn't let them swear oaths or something like that. The second was much later, and it was how I found out that someone in my class was a resident alien.
It's obviously a stand-in for a religious prayer; I don't think anyone past 4th grade had any misconception about that. It's also a prayer of nationalism and loyalty to the country. If we could bring people back together like that still, it would help.
Yep, everyday K-12. We also had a moment of silence after the pledge, with the idea that kids would use that time to pray. Of course, nobody did because it was lame.
I grew up in Florida and Tennessee in the 80s and 90s. It was definitely a daily thing, but very lax enforcement and I don't know that anybody would have made a huge stink about it even then. The duck and cover "tornado" drills were very real and very serious though.
We only had one teacher tell us we were required to (we were standing up just kinda mumbling it), the following class everyone just stayed seated and at least 3 of us had printouts in our backpacks confirming that it was a violation of the first amendment to require it.
He didn't even acknowledge it, knowing that teacher I imagine he looked it up right after and realized he was wrong.
We eventually resumed standing up but hands at our sides and silent.
Edit: if this is showing up as a reply to another comment, it was supposed to be a top level comment to the OP. Some weird stuff keeps happening with my comments but I'm not sure if it's just visual.
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