End the Occupation! - Mass. School Bans Pledge of Allegiance

To quote Larry Elder: Pass the Tylenol. Fox News reports:

School Officials in Mass. Town Won't Let Students Recite Pledge of Allegiance
By Todd Starnes
Published June 29, 2010

When Sean Harrington entered his freshman year at Arlington High School, he noticed something peculiar: There were no American flags in the classrooms, and no one recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

So Harrington enlisted the aid of his fellow students, and now, three years later, they have succeeded in getting flags installed in the classrooms. But the pledge still will not be recited.

The Arlington, Mass., school committee has rejected the 17-year-old’s request to allow students to voluntarily recite the Pledge of Allegiance, because some educators are concerned that it would be hard to find teachers willing to recite it [WTF???], according to a report in the Arlington Patch.

Harrington had presented school officials with a petition signed by 700 people, along with letters of support from lawmakers including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

But the request to have the pledge recited failed when the committee’s vote ended in a 3-3 tie.

“I was really heartbroken,” Harrington told FOX News Radio. “It’s hard to think that something so traditional in American society was turned down.” …

So let me get this straight: The only reason this public high school has American flags hanging in the classrooms is because students had to organize and campaign for it? 

And the reason Harrington’s pledge request was denied was because the committee was concerned “it would be hard to find teachers willing to recite it”?

What kind of  &*%^)$ work at this school and what the &*(^#$ do they teach there? Is it just America-bashing, Constitution-shredding, and global warming propaganda all day long?

Here’s the story as told by the local Arlington, Mass. paper.

... In the 1930s and 1940s, courts in Massachusetts and West Virginia ruled that children who were Jehovah’s Witnesses and had been expelled from school for refusing to recite the pledge and salute the flag had been deprived of their right to freedom of expression and religion.

“There was a lot of persecution against Jehovah’s Witnesses back then, and I don’t want to return to that at all,” said Pierce.

But how does that get rectified by violating the free speech of students who want to recite the Pledge?

For Heigham, even a voluntary Pledge of Allegiance poses a potential legal problem because an employee would have to say it every day.

Oh, well that explains it. NOT.

But Curran countered that officials could recruit volunteers or play a recording, so that only those who wanted to would say it.

After the vote, Harrington left the committee room with an entourage of nine adults who shouted taunts at the committee such as, “You people should go back to your own countries.”

Harrington’s next step will be some form of legal action, although he is not certain what it will be just yet. He said he has been persecuted himself, called a Nazi and a fascist, for his cause.

Sounds logical to me: Campaign for free speech, be called a Nazi and a fascist. Keep it classy, Arlington.

END THE OCCUPATION! LIBERALS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS NOW!!!