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Flag monitors - Letters to the editor - Letter to the Editor

Humanist, Nov-Dec, 2002 by Bill Thwaites

Barbara Dority's "Under God Divides the Indivisible" (September/October 2002) on the "under God" part of the pledge of allegiance reminded me of my tenure as a junior high general science teacher in Monterey, California. The year was 1960--six years after the "under God" part had been inserted. But I hadn't had anything to do with the pledge since well before the change.

I'd always been uneasy with the pledge, however. Its emphasis on allegiance didn't square with what I thought was President Lincoln's more noble vision of a peoples' government and civic responsibility. Nevertheless, I followed the path of least resistance and led the pledge of allegiance every day during my fist period. But soon I noticed that my students were finishing the pledge a couple of words after I did. Why was this?

For several days I took a different position in the class during the pledge. Day after day I was unable to understand the mumbling of the student I stood near. At length I stood near a very conscientious young lady who enunciated each word with masterful precision. And there it was. She was saying "one nation under God" while I was saying "one nation indivisible."

The next day I proposed the creation of a rotating "flag monitor." I told the class that the whole idea of the pledge was to promote civic responsibility, and that if the flag monitor didn't remind me of the need to say the pledge it wouldn't happen. Well, I didn't make the order of rotation easy, but hey, democracy isn't supposed to be easy.

After that innovation was instituted, we would go months at a time without saying the pledge. Then some student would ask why we never said the pledge and I would respond by asking the class, "Who remembers why we're not saying the pledge?"

Someone would recall the flag monitor's duty, and the class would take the blame for ignoring its civic responsibility. So a new succession of flag monitors would be agreed upon and the pledge would be said dutifully every morning until the monitor for the day was absent or forgot to do his or her job.

I came up with the idea of flag monitors because I was embarrassed by the pledge. But sometimes I wonder if some of my eighth graders might still be recalling the valuable lesson they learned about civic responsibility in their junior high science class. You just never know.