Let's End the Pledge of Allegiance in Schools

[DFW]

68. "I spread the peaches....."

My daughters were born and grew up in Germany, where overt expressions of patriotism bring back memories they'd rather not dredge up, and are therefore discouraged.

In Germany, high school students are encouraged to take a semester or a year abroad to broaden their intellectual horizons. My daughter had visited the USA and spoke passable English, as I had spoken it with her from birth. She elected to take her semester "abroad" right back in Dallas at the local public high school near my residence there. I went with her for the first week to make sure she had no bureaucratic problems I could solve by being there.

After the first couple of days, I asked her if all was well. She said yes, but they did some odd things at the school. "Like what?" I asked.

She said that she found the ritual chanting every morning to be odd. Ritual chanting? Who did ritual chanting? This was not a Navajo school. She said that every morning, they all got up and did some kind of monotonic ritual chant. I couldn't imagine this. In a Dallas public school? Wasn't that forbidden by law? I asked what they chanted. She said they mostly mumbled as if they were tired. I asked WHAT was it they were chanting/mumbling? She said it started out with "I spread the peaches."

I couldn't believe that every morning, in a Dallas public school, that classes did ritual chanting that started with "I spread the peaches." I asked what else they did. She said they stood up and put theirs hands on their chests while chanting. Then I remembered. Her English was good, but in normal home conversation, I had never used the words "pledge" or "allegiance," and therefore, she didn't know them. The kids were already mumbling the words out of unenthusiastic boredom, so she just assumed she was hearing words she knew, but spoken indistinctly.

So, "I spread the peaches to the flag.............."