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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/opinion-pledge-of-allegiance_n_64a2eca3e4b0dcb22c46c8dc
The Freedom NOT To Recite The Pledge Of Allegiance

Forgive me, dear reader, if I implore you to refrain from engaging in overly demonstrative platitudes about love of God or country when discussing the Pledge of Allegiance.
On this day of independence, when we celebrate America’s birthdate, I decided to embark on a cursory and perhaps ill-advised review of this invocation, long recited in classrooms nationwide. To my surprise, it remains a source of controversy, at the root of which are the most fundamental principles of our democracy: the First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty.

We may have been taught as pliable and vulnerable children that the pledge was all about love of God and country, but the pledge’s origins belie such dogma.

Some historical context is particularly instructive given our pitiable grasp of civics, including, it seems, among some educators.
I chose to return to this subject having covered it nearly a decade ago when so-called “pledge controversies” — more precisely, over the words “under God” — erupted at public schools in two California locales: Tracy and San Jacinto.

The San Jacinto Unified School District agreed in late October 2014 to apologize to a Monte Vista Middle School student after a teacher admonished an 11-year-old boy for not standing during the pledge.

But at West High School in Tracy, 17-year-old Derek Giardina received detention and a reduced grade in his speech class for omitting the “under God” in his required recitation. The school district, which claimed to respect everyone’s religious beliefs or lack thereof, supported the punishment because, it explained, it was part of an assignment to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, and, as district spokesperson Sam Strube put it, “If you’re going to lead the school in the pledge, you better say it in the traditional way.”