The pledge of allegence should be recited! It is an act of respect to our country, and its veterans who served our country

"If we put this much passion and interest into what students were actually learning in the classroom, maybe our education system wouldn't be producing a nation of burger flippers."

The whole point about parents, students, teachers, etc, who complain about such things is that they are they easy things to complain about. The three "solutions" listed would take all of a nanosecond to come up with. Easy. Paying attention to what the kid is actually learning (and how that learning is being done) is much more difficult. So...what about those lunchroom lines!

What is the big deal if you have to say it. So what I am an atheist and I could care less if people put god on everything. It does not harm me and it does not effect my everyday life.

People just want something to complain about.

If you pledge your allegiance once, then you've pledged it. Does your allegiance disappear overnight or over the weekend? When entering the military you pledge to support and defend the Constitution, etc. You've taken a pledge once and it was good for your entire enlistment.
So saying the pledge is OK but then doesn't it get redundant after a while?

I am so glad I took Neal's best advice ever. I have one child because that is all I could afford to send to private school.

Heaven help all these pitiful kids coming up today.

Which seems like a few lifetimes ago, but in reality, was roughly 20 years ago, we had to say the Pledge. Maybe my perspective is a bit different, though, because I went to a Catholic school. Anyway, we had to say the Pledge (and our morning prayer) fom 1st grade through 8th. In 8th grade, as part of our required study of the Constitution and U.S. History for our graduation, our history teacher went through the Pledge, line by line, and dicussed exactly what each line meant, what we were pledging, and how this tied into the concept of freedom, and the concept of a republic (Neal, you are correct in your assertion that private schools DO teach such concepts!). As a kid, I remember not really paying attention to what we were saying, not really caring about it, not being offended or bothered by it. Why do I get the seaking suspicon that kids today, unless influenced by their parents to be bothered, feel much the same way I did? I guess I can see a kid raised in an atheist household not wanting to say the "Under God" part (which obviously was not an issue in a Catholic school), but beyond that, I just can't imagine kids care much either way. I bet a lot of the kids that leave do so to drag out having to start the school day, rather than being passionate about saying the Pledge. I personally favor making it optional in the classroom. At the end of the day, this is a drop of water in the sea of issues with which we should be concerned. No one is damaged by saying the Pledge, or not saying it. As long as parents are more concerned with the Pledge of Allegiance, the focus is taken off real problems, like the lack of respect that children show adults, the low reading, math and science scores, the myriad of anti-American indoctrination and the like will go unaddressed, which actually hurts the children.

Neal. I have to disagree with you here.

If our government schools aren't producing burger flippers, who on earth is going to flip my burgers?

Neal, The best think about have kids learn and say the Pledge is as politicians keep insisting "We are a Democracy". All you have to do is ask a kid to recite the Pledge and stop them when they get to the line, "to the Republic for which it stands". Republic, not "To democracy for which it stands". Even a Gub'ment skool 8th grader can understand the politicians are lying to us.