Some time ago, Woodbury Elementary School stopped reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  No one remembers when it happen, but several people in town now want the recitation returned to daily school life.  There are only 810 residents in the town of Woodbury and a bitter debate has ensued over the restoration of the pledge.

But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn.

I can personally attest to this being true.  While I don’t  live in Vermont, I do live in a small town and work in an elementary school.  The children at school do look at the nonparticipating students as weird and think that they should just say the pledge because you’re not patriotic or godly enough if you don’t.

The controversy here, however, is where and when to recite the pledge as opposed to whether it should be in school at all.

School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom.

…starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.  About half the students chose to participate…

Tedesco, 55, a retired U.S. Marine Corps major, and others who signed his petitions didn’t like that solution, calling it disruptive to routine and inappropriate because it put young children in the position of having to decide between pre-class play time and leaving the classroom to say the Pledge.

Uhm, if you have to recite the pledge in class, you will also have to decide between your pre-class play time and reciting the pledge.  Regardless of whether you recited it in the classroom or in a gymnasium, you’re still going to have to make a choice.

“Saying the Pledge in the classroom is legal, convenient and traditional,” said Tedesco. “Asking kindergarten through sixth graders who want to say the Pledge to leave their classrooms to do so is neither convenient nor traditional.”

What Mr. Tedesco really means to say is that it’s convenient, so let’s just do it in the classroom and not worry about who is offended or feels left out.  For the record, when I was in elementary school (1975-1982), the entire school recited the pledge in the gymnasium before school.  If you didn’t want to stand or recite the pledge, you didn’t have to.  My elementary school still practices this each morning, only it’s now done in the cafeteria/gymnasium.

On Friday, the routine changed again.  Just before 8 a.m., Martin herded all the school’s students — and a handful of adults — into a cramped foyer that adjoins the first-floor classrooms and told sixth-grader Nathan Gilbert, 12, to lead them in the Pledge.

The principal claims to have done this so that it is not as obvious as to who is and who isn’t reciting the pledge.  Everyone is not going to one location with some reciting the pledge, while others abstain.

This may be the best solution of all.  Most elementary kids do not even understand the pledge or the ramifications of the words in the pledge.  The ones I work with every day, while claiming that I’m not patriotic for not reciting it, are also very understanding of the seventh-day adventists who are not allowed to recite it.  As an adult, the thinking of the students boggles my mind, but makes sense to them.  If this Vermont school has come up with a way to make everyone, except for one parent, happy, then they should stick by their decision.  You can be patriotic and love your country without blind obedience and indoctrination.