MILLERSVILLE, Md. – A Maryland teenager is protesting his high school’s decision to broadcast the Pledge of Allegiance in languages other than English during National Foreign Language Week.
Patrick Linton, a ninth-grader at Old Mill High School in Millersville, said he and some other students sat down rather than stand when the pledge was read in Russian over the school’s public address system.
The 15-year-old said his teacher told him if he had a problem, he should leave the room – so he did. And, he said, he doesn’t plan to return this week.
“This is America, and we got soldiers at war,” he said. “When you’re saying the pledge in a different language which nobody understands, that’s not OK.”
School system officials said the activity would continue, though the English version of the pledge would be read first today.
“This is just a way to connect what’s going on in the classroom and this daily activity where we say the Pledge of Allegiance,” school system spokesman Jonathan Brice said. The pledge was to be read in Spanish, French, Latin, Russian and German.
Charles Linton, Patrick’s father, said the use of other languages is disrespectful to the United States.
“It’s like wearing a cross upside down in a church,” said Charles Linton of Glen Burnie, Md.
The Pledge of Allegiance has been the center of debate many times since the United States officially recognized it in 1942. A year later, the Supreme Court ruled that no one could be forced to say the pledge in school.
Last year, the court ruled against a California man who contended that the words “under God” violated the separation of church and state. The court said the man did not have legal standing to bring the case.
John Baer, author of “The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892-1992,” said the pledge as originally written was an international peace pledge that started: “I pledge allegiance to my flag.”
“Citizens of any republic could recite it,” he said. In the 1920s, the American Legion began substituting “the flag of the United States of America.”
Jim Boulet, the executive director of English First, a Virginia-based organization that believes English should be the official language of the United States, did not believe the Maryland situation was a cause for concern.
However, the pledge’s symbolic value should not be trivialized, Boulet said. “In this nation of immigrants, one of the symbols of our national unity is when we all gather around the flag and we salute it in English,” he said.
But Bret Lovejoy, executive director of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages, said, “America is about promoting democracy,” and that translating the pledge was “an innocent and harmless way to get children interested in other languages.”
Baer said the pledge’s author, Francis Bellamy, would have appreciated the debate.
“He hoped it would be a subject of discussion and intellectual stimulation to the students,” Baer said. “This to me seems right down the alley. Otherwise, it sort of becomes a meaningless ritual.”
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