Wonder if the ACLU will step forward to defend the rights of a student that did not stand during a rendition of the Mexican National Anthem during a school assembly.
More importantly, if one cannot compel Jehovah Witnesses to say the Pledge Of Allegiance or make atheists bow their heads for a moment of prayer, on what grounds can a school demand students stand and render homage to a nation to which the students are not bound and owe no loyalty?
Could a school with a significant Arab or Palestinian population demand Jewish students pay tribute to portraits of Yasir Arafat or the Ayatollah Khomeni?
As an arm of the government, the public schools exist to promote the interests of American society and the citizens of the United States, not those of every other nation upon the face of the earth.
The primary mission of these places of what use to be called learning was at one time to inoculate into the minds of students a love and appreciation of American things.
From the "Jaywalking" segments on "The Tonight Show" and similar bits on "Sean Hannity", are the schools even imparting this most rudimentary of civic knowledge anymore; can American students even name our national anthem?
If not, then most certainly time should not be diverted promoting ideas of foreign lands and cultures when the ones around which life ought to be organized here are being so neglected.
Those whose hearts are elsewhere are always free to return to their places of origin if they find our way of life all that odious.
After all, they are the ones that came here in the first place and not vice versa.
One does not go into someone else's home, claim a room, and then expect the host to change his entire routine just to suit the uninvited guest.
Copyright 2005 by Frederick Meekins
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