ESM student: Teacher berated me for sitting for Pledge of Allegiance

[deurbano]

95. I got kicked out of a school assembly in 11th grade for not standing for the pledge.

I had stopped standing in 10th grade, but no one noticed before then. My two youngest children went to a private Mandarin immersion school for the first few years of their education, and at some point I realized they had never learned the pledge. My son didn't switch to public school until 7th grade, and I don't think he can accurately recite the pledge even now, since they only recited it at assemblies by then, but my daughter switched for third grade, when it was still a daily ritual.

Also... our daughter is adopted from Vietnam, so she and her brother also briefly attended Saturday Vietnamese school, and while I didn't understand the language, at one school event I realized my children were learning how to pledge allegiance to the flag of "South Vietnam"! This was before they switched to public school, so it was the only pledge they had learned, yet.

Around that time, my mom wanted to take the kids to church for Easter, and this was another ritual with which they were not familiar. She found some evangelical church in some tiny town off I-5 in CA, half way between our homes. The church had a Sunday School and Easter Egg hunt. My son (4 years older than his little sister) was mortified when she kept asking stuff, like, "Who is Jesus?" "What do you mean he is here with us now?" "Where is he?"

So, my daughter had no idea who Jesus was... and she couldn't say the Pledge of Allegiance... but she could recite the pledge to the flag of the "country" of South Vietnam, and knew all about Monkey King! (My work here is done...)