MEET THE BAUMANN SCHOOL BUS DRIVERS
SCHOOLS
070496TO PLEDGE OR NOT TO PLEDGE
By ALISON HENDRIE
SARA Vogel knows what patriotism is. "It means loving your country," says the bright 8 year old a third grader at P.S. 321 in Park Slope, who is currently studying American history.
But like her classmates, and a surprisingly large number of school children citywide, there is a piece of history she doesn't know. Her school doesn't begin the day with the Pledge of Allegiance.
"We used to say it in third grade, but then we stopped,"
Taylor, 12, who will enter the -sixth grade next year at Birch Wathen Lenox, a private school on the Upper East Side. "I'm not sure I know all the words."
Of course, there are plenty of schools, and teachers, who uphold the tradition, but it is more the exception than the rule.
That's because according to the New York City Board of Education, while it is policy to start the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, it is not a requirement.
"Students who do not wish to participate cannot be compelled to in violation of their first and 14th Amendment rights," says Frank Sobrino, Board of Education spokesman.
Two Supreme Court rulings in the 1940's both upheld the Pledge as a requirement and, shortly thereafter, stated it could not be compelled when a student had conscientious objections based on religion.
(For those of you who may have forgotten the words, "Under God," is one of its phrases. It was added sometime between the 1930's and the 1950's during the height of the Cold War, perhaps to show the atheistic Communists what America was made of.)
"For the past 60 years or so, the court has been very solicitous of the rights of the religiously observant objector to refrain from saying the Pledge of Allegiance," says Professor David Gregory, a Constitutional Law professor at St. John's University School of Law.
But currently, rather than an individual here and there, entire schools are choosing to exercise their conscientious objector status.
And parents and teachers most often cite multi-culturalism - not religion - as the reason the pledge is avoided.
"The neighborhood is very varied," Iris Feeron, Sara's teacher at P.S. 321 in Park Slope. "We're a very unstructured school, very multicultural."
Margaret A., whose daughter attends an Upper East Side public school where the pledge is not said, asks: "Is it because there are so many nationalities here in New York City that we don't say the Pledge?
It's been theorized that the pledge, which is less than a century old, was started by the Boy Scouts or was verse that reflected the anti-immigrant sentiment at the turn of the century.
But as Loretta Judge, a third-grade teacher at P.S. 107 in the Bronx, sees it, "The whole point [of the pledge] is that there are a lot of different people who have come together in this country.
Judge leads her class in its recitation daily.
"Each morning, two students recite the pledge over the loud speaker for the entire school and we, as a class, say it together," says Judge. "Along with our own school pledge, it is a morning routine that we have always done."
Just as schools are split on this issue, parents are too. "What patriotism is, is kids going to school and learning things that are really important, says Alyson Vogel, Sara's mother. "I just can't imagine taking up an extra few minutes a day saying something that doesn1 seem to be teaching anything."birdbrain
Sara takes a different position, the 8-year old says, "It sort of reminds people that your're patriotic."
Jerry Taylor, Nick's father agrees. "I would like students to say the Pledge," he says. "With all the p.c. fury that's taken place, one wonders how those things survive but apparently they do."
Deborah Merson, who grew up in Queens and is now the mother of two children who attend school in Mamaroneck, has another point of view.
"In junior high, we never said the Pledge in protest of the Vietnam war," she says. "I was floored, then, to see my son's school say it over the loudspeaker and recite it every day. I had to stop and rethink my entire perspective."
"I'm behind it now," she adds.
- Her son Gregory, 8, not only knows all the words, but knows what they mean. "We learned about it in kindergarten," he says.
"You have to stand up so that people know you really mean it," says Gregory adding, "You have to stand up so that people know you really mean it."