I can remember my first couple of years of schools, the teachers instructing us in the ritual of the morning pledge. We were told that we said it to remember that America was free. After about 2nd grade, it was not said again on a regular basis until I reached high school. Our principal was a former Marine, and he made sure that every student understood the pledge, and the blood that was shed and lives lost to ensure that we had the right to recite it daily. Until then, it was really not something I thought a lot about. I knew the pledge, I knew the meaning of it, but I didn’t really understand the significance of it.
To some lesser extent, this was the same feeling I had about the national anthem. During one of the many assemblies we had during my first year of high school, I can’t remember which of the patriotic holidays it was, but flag day sticks in my mind, our vice principal told us a story about the flag and our national anthem. The story can be found at http://www.usflag.org/francis.scott.key.html
After the story, myself and my peers had a new understanding of our pledge and anthem. No longer were we groggy teens resenting having to stand up at the beginning of the day to chant out a bunch of words. Well, OK, many of us were still resentful, but that had more to do with being teens than having to say the pledge of allegiance.
OK, back to my original topic. The one thing I found interesting about how our vice principal said his pledge, was emphasis on the now controversial line, “One nation under God….”.
His recitation of the pledge eliminated the pause between “God” and “Indivisible”. He related to us how in the marines, his unit considered themselves indivisible as long as they were under the love and protection of whichever God each individual believed in. Our recitation repeated what he and his fellow marines started:
One nation, Under God Indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all.
To my knowledge, there was never a stink made in my school regarding this. I was surrounded by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Pagans, agnostics and atheists. Whether this was due to none of the kids mentioning anything at home regarding the pledge, or some other cause, I don’t know. I just know that we understood what we were saying, and why we were saying it.