Remember my pledge of allegiance fiasco?

The Core RPGC Main Forum
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The last two years of my school year, I refused to stand for the pledge at all due to my own personal reasons. I’d rather not let this turn into a political discussion, but if it does, then so be it.

I was refused access to computers during homeroom time, which meant little to nothing to me, due to the fact that homeroom was a good 15 minutes long, and I had 3 study halls that I spent doing tech support anyway. Of course I was ridiculed by the dipshits of the school who knew nothing of politics aside from what they heard from their parents, who knew next to nothing as well. A few other people didn’t stand, as well.

Well, after I graduated, I was relieved from thinking about it ever again, but the other night my mom came into my room almost laughing. She opened up the school’s new handbook for the 2005-2006 semester. They’d added a section about the pledge of allegiance. It reads as follows:

“<b>PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE</b>
The Pledge of Allegiance will be said each morning. Students are to stand quietly, place their right hand over their heart, and join in the pledge. The only exception considered will be for religious reasons. This exception must be in writing, signed by the parent/guardian and on file in the office.”

That is by far the LARGEST load of bullshit I’ve ever read. Not only is it going against the supreme court decision in the case of the West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette [319 U.S. 624, 625], it’s also going against hundreds of other court decisions, such as the 1973 case that went to the US Court of Appeals about a child that contested the choice of either standing quietly, or leaving the room until the pledge was completed. They used this in my old school as well. The court sided with the student in both of these cases.

My school has a history of horribly worded rules. I was helping the school sysadmin revise the computer rules, when we came across one that says, and I quote, “No student will be permitted to download anything onto school-owned hard drives. No content whatsoever.” Too bad the idiots writing the rules don’t realize that everything you do on the internet, which is sanctioned by the school for research use, is downloaded to the hard drive in the temporary internet files, as well as any other caches the computer creates.

Anyone else think the people running most schools just happen to be the damndest idiots ever?

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“My education was interrupted only by my schooling.” - Winston Churchill

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That’s only too true. :\

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Ya, i think myschool is ran by a complete idiot. First off its a private school, and they have all these stupid rules, like our hair(guys) cant touch our ears or our collar. The girls dont have any rules now, because one of the faculty has 2 kids that broke the rule for so long, plus her hair was too short too. The girls rule was that it had to touch your shoulder. I think thats so stupid. Also i say we get uniforms at our school, because we have dress code violations all the time. We have to wear dress pants, collared shirt, belt must always be worn, dress shoes, and guys cant wear jewelery at all, except rings. Now back to the thing about uniforms, The administrator says that we should look different from the world, which is really stupid, because the world could have any look it wanted to. Uniforms would make it so there would be less dress code violations. I believe my school is ran by complete idiots. You thought you had it bad steve with the pledge to the american flag, We have to pledge to 2 other things. The Bible and the christian flag. I could understand it somtimes, but not always. Aparently for a school that says i have all my freedoms, I basically dont because they say, when i do use my freedom of speech, that i dont have that right…I dont know about you , but that shows my school is ran by idiots.

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It’s the fact that it’s a private school. You really have no right to bitch about a private school, since your parents pay for you to go there. The private school gets to make up every rule it wants. Hell, it could require kids to receive a punch in the face once a day, and as long as people paid to have their kids go there, there’s not much that can be done about it.

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…It shows.

Just be grateful you don’t have to wear a tie.

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The rules at my school weren’t all that bad, but the teachers did start complaining about their new dress code. Teachers were required to wear slacks or dresses and nice shirts starting my senior year. The science teachers got pretty grumpy because they had labs and didn’t want any of their nice clothes to be ruined during them. It’s the rest of the faculty that is dumb though. Specifically the attendance office. There’s about 10 people working there and they can’t keep anything straight. I wound up with so many unexcused absences that I couldn’t fix because they screwed up. Almost lost a credit too. I’m glad I’m done dealing with them.

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Steve: I would suggest writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or something if you are really concerned about your (former) school’s policies.

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I really just may do that. It’s quite a good idea. I also just found out that rule is suddenly absent from the high school’s rules… it only effects the Junior High students. Very odd.

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I dearly hope the middle school I’m entering this year isn’t like that. The people who run the school sound completely retarded.

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AMERICA FUCK YEAH

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Want an American roomie? I want to defect. :frowning:

My school’s fucking retarded as well. A lot the teachers quit last year allegedly due to coaches altering jocks’ grades, surprise.

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I just HAVE to get this in…

Tolliver Touch.

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Yeah, complaining about a private school is pointless. I went to a private school for all of my highschool years and I didn’t stand for shit.

Well, Steve, personally I think you shouldn’t waste your effort to stand for the pledge of allegiance. If I didn’t have to stand and say shit like the Hail Mary prayer and all of that crap then you shouldn’t have to stand for sanctimonious, faux patriotic bullshit. So yeah, you inspired a rule or something :stuck_out_tongue:

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One of the government teachers is notorious for overly enjoying his female student’s participation in his classes. So much that it’s said if you wear a skirt, you basically pass (and that is VERY true, from my two years experience with the man).

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<i>“PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
The Pledge of Allegiance will be said each morning. Students are to stand quietly, place their right hand over their heart, and join in the pledge. The only exception considered will be for religious reasons. This exception must be in writing, signed by the parent/guardian and on file in the office.”</i>

That is by far the LARGEST load of bullshit I’ve ever read. Not only is it going against the supreme court decision in the case of the West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette [319 U.S. 624, 625], it’s also going against hundreds of other court decisions, such as the 1973 case that went to the US Court of Appeals about a child that contested the choice of either standing quietly, or leaving the room until the pledge was completed. They used this in my old school as well. The court sided with the student in both of these cases.

You can probably just send them this paragraph, its concise and subtle enough to stir them to action. Maybe attach some excerpts from the actual rulings too, so they can review them if they wish.

Honestly, i don’t think this is your school out to get you. Yea, they want to make sure a situation like the one you caused doesn’t happen again, but i don’t think they even REALIZE how absolutely wrong this rule is. I think if you just call their attention to it, they’ll review their decision.

However, since you are no longer a student in the district, they may waive your request, just because you have no bearing over them anymore. In this case, have your mom write the letter on behalf of your sister (she’s still in the district, right?), that way they know that a current student is complaining.

If they ignore you, THEN raise a big deal about it. :wink:

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raises hand My school! mymymymy! Pick me, pick me!
Actually, everything at our school ran perfectly, which was the problem. They had nothing to do. However, it says somewhere in an unwritten law unknown to me, that you always have to do stuff in order to look good so you can say you achieved something. Thus creating piles of bureaucracy.
As of next school year, our school will:

  • Sell no more juices/ sugared drinks, in order to, get this, save the teeth of younger children. WTF IS THIS. Alone the message it sends. I could bitch about this for hours.
  • have acdress code/ some sort of school uniform to ‘enforce the loose dress code we already have’. BULLSHIT. We never had any dress code violations, we wouldnt even need one, nobody normally dresses in an offensive or inappropriate matter except for some girls not wearing any t-shirts and stuff ‘covering their shoulders’ during summer, and one guy who once wore an osama bin laden t-shirt for about two hours until he took it off because he was pussyish enough to think he’d get beaten up anyways. That’s it.
    -enforce the new school constitution. yes, you heard me. Our school took germany’s constitution and changed it accordingly to fit a school (as in, first article: the dignity of a human being shall not be disrespected under any circumstance- exchange “human” by “student” and you got it. and so on.)
  • more stuff to come. i cant remember anything right now, but there’s more. wait til the drama starts on wednesday. x_x
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Oh no, I don’t think it’s my school out to get me. Especially seeing as I graduated and was out of their hair, but I am the only person that was sent to the office about such a problem. Most other people stood up and just stood there, while others left the room or whatever while it was said.

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Making it mandatory to stand for any idea or object against one’s will makes about as much sense as punishing attempted suicide with the death penalty.

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He wouldn’t happen to have been both bald and full of shit, would he?