As the years go on, we have begun to see more and more kneeling during the National Anthem. Students are refusing to stand, or even say the pledge. Why is that? Students fear they are offending other students by standing and repeating the pledge.
The National Anthem and the Pledge Of Allegiance is to honor the country and the veterans that were, and still are, protecting our rights.
An article written by Summer Etzler, a student at Linganore High School states, “I stopped standing because we’re never taught what the Pledge of Allegiance actually means. We start saying the Pledge of Allegiance in kindergarten. We’ve been saying it for so long, I think we’re saying it without knowing why. It’s just something we say every day because it’s a social norm.” It seems as though kids no longer know why we bother to say the pledge.
It has been discovered that students have the right to “opt out” of saying the pledge because the word “God” is being used, and it is causing too much controversy.
In an article “The Pledge Of Allegiance Has Become A Nightmare For Kids,” it is explained, “This right to opt out of the Pledge is even more important than it may seem at first glance, because it has become a focal point in legal disputes over the ‘under God’ wording. When lawsuits have been brought to challenge the constitutionality of ‘under God,’ defenders of the wording consistently use the ‘voluntariness’ defense to argue that there is nothing discriminatory about the exercise.”
The main cause of the opt-out is because students feel bullied when they say the pledge. They fear that if they say the pledge, the disagreeing party would discriminate against that certain student. The solution? Students just stop saying the pledge all together to avoid being called out by the third party. Students want to meet the new norms– and the norm nowadays is to opt out of honoring our country.