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2004-08-03 - 7:51 p.m.

Three days of training left! Woo hoo!

Here's an interesting bit. Those of you who know me or have been reading for a while know that I'm liberal in my politics.

We had an exercise in class in peer editing. The teacher was showing us a way to have students edit their own work by passing it in a circle.

First you would pass it to the person two people to the left of you and that person would highlight everything that they liked.

Next you would pass it down three more to the left and that person would underline any passages that he or she didn't understand and place comments in the margins.

The topic that the teacher had us write about for the example was this:

"Should students be forced to stand for the pledge of allegiance?"

I took the Con position for a few reasons (aside from my personal discomfort with the "one nation under God" portion).

One reason is that I don't feel that "forcing" anyone to do something is ever a great idea.

For example, I feel that being forced to go to church, Catholic school, and Sunday school is one of the reasons that I'm so anti-organized religion now.

My second reason was that not all of our students are American citizens. For that reason alone, I feel that it is not necessarily fair to force them to stand.

Personally, I don't feel that it is disrespectful to sit quietly through the pledge (some people obviously do as I soon found out) which brings me to my third reason, which is that I believe strongly in the right to free speech as well as the right to demonstrate one's belief in a peaceful manner.

Some of my fellow students obviously did not share my views, which is fine, I respect their opinion. I just wish that they had respected mine.

My page came back marked with comments such as, "Foreigners can go back to where they came from if they don't want to pledge allegiance to the US!"

Hmmm... and this person is going to be teaching children in urban schools with a high ratio of minorities and new immigrants?

Yes, things will work out just fine with that attitude.

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