This is in response to the article by Todd Nuttman entitled \u201cPledge of Allegiance or blind obedience?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Nuttman,<\/p>\n
In your article you asked people not to jump to conclusions, and that is exactly what you did. I am sure that the school district in no way considered the suspended students \u201cfuture terrorists.\u201d Those are your words used to grab the attention and hopefully support of your readers.<\/p>\n
You are also making an assumption that they are \u201cperfectly good students.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most young people are perfectly good students and great kids.<\/p>\n
However, my husband was a junior high and high school principal for 27 years, and I taught for 25 years. Every now and then, there are students who are looking for a way to be disrespectful and disruptive.<\/p>\n
My husband and I visited a school in King County three years ago where 80 percent of the kids did not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.<\/p>\n
They talked – listened to their headsets – talked on cell phones and slept during the pledge.<\/p>\n
Not standing for the Pledge of Allegiance had nothing to do with exercising their rights – it had to do with following the crowd.<\/p>\n
Interestingly enough, the students in the ESL classes all stood up during the pledge.<\/p>\n
I think it is important as citizens of the United States to show respect for the flag and our country.<\/p>\n
It is not \u201cblind obedience;\u201d it is a choice to do one small thing for our country while there are brave young men and women in the military risking their lives for us every day.<\/p>\n
They are risking their lives for all of us – including you, Mr. Nuttman – so you are able to write what you please in the newspaper.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bonnie Sawyer<\/p>\n
Retired Kent school teacher<\/p>\n
Kent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is in response to the article by Todd Nuttman entitled \u201cPledge of Allegiance or blind obedience?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3139"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}