Analysis Of Examining The Pledge Of Allegiance

Do you normally repeat words and phrase, without fully understanding the meaning, just because people tell you to? Well many of us growing up in the United States are guilty of this and we don’t even realize it. Ever since the first day of kindergarten students are taught to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning before class, and students who refused to do so were ostracized by the rest of the students in the class. The pledge was put in place for citizens of the United States to show their patriotism towards this country, but as five year olds we were just doing what the teachers had told us to do. We didn’t understand the actually meaning of the words we were saying which completely defeats the purpose of the pledge in the first place.

According to Leisa Martin in her article titled “Examining the Pledge of Allegiance,” the pledge was first published in The Youth’s Companion in September 1892, by a socialist minister named Francis Bellamy (Martin 127). People of this time feared that the new immigrants entering the country from Europe were a society of people obsessed with material possessions and would abandoned their neighbors and especially their country for an extra dollar. The pledge was intended to be a way to bring out the patriotism of the new citizens who otherwise might turn their back on the nation. The original pledge written by Bellamy has been altered multiple times by the United States, the first of which took place in the early 1920’s. Martin also states that this addition to the pledge removed “my flag” and replaced them with the words “The flag of the United States of American” making it specifically directed to the US (128). The pledge was again changed to better fit the idea of what a patriotic citizen would

But our country has put an emphasis on false ideas of what patriotism is, we need to focus more on the action of people and whether or not that reflects the ideals of a good American. By volunteering and helping out your fellow Americans or even something as small as going out of your way to thank a veteran for their service proves how patriotic someone is way beyond reading the Pledge of Allegiance. Symbols like the flag and rituals such as the pledge are good ways people can show their loyalty, but it’s not the only way. Forcing students to say the pledge every morning goes against what the words in the pledge stand for, and doesn’t help prove who is patriotic and who isn’t. As a citizen of this great country even if you don’t participate or believe in the pledge, you should be allowed to sit down or skip words but you should still show respect to those whom it means a great deal too. Being the proud country that we are we should applaud those who decided to be different than the rest, but still show respect to the country and the ideals of others in the process. The pledge states “with liberty and justice for all”, that being said, we shouldn’t ostracize those who choose not to recite the pledge but in other ways show their patriotism. The pledge has been altered in the wrong direction steering away from what it was originally intended to do, is its now just