Woodbury, Vermont and the Pledge of Allegiance

Lagniappe's Lair has a posting up about Vermont townspeople who are fighting about keeping the Pledge of Allegiance in their school. Rather than writing my own posting (why re-invent the wheel?), go check it out here.

Here is just a snippet:

Stories like this one make me wonder when some people stopped being Americans.

WOODBURY — No one's sure when daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance fell by the wayside at Woodbury Elementary School. But efforts to restore them have erupted into a bitter dispute in this tiny (pop. 810) Vermont town, with school officials blocking the exercise from classrooms amid concerns that it holds nonparticipating children up to scorn. Supporters say the classroom is the place for it, and the disagreement has fueled an increasingly acrimonious debate.

School officials agreed to resume the pledge as a daily exercise, but not in the classroom."We don't want to isolate children every day in their own classroom, or make them feel they're different," said Principal Michaela Martin. Instead, starting last week, a sixth grade student was assigned to go around to the four classrooms before classes started, gathering up anyone who wanted to say it and then walking them up creaky wooden steps to a second-floor gymnasium, where he led them in the pledge.