A Boy and His Flag: Why Will Won’t Pledge
Posted by Darren Schwindaman on Nov 15, 2009 - 11:40 AM
One of the things that we're doing while 'branding' democratic education is to really break down the terms "democracy" and "education" and find how the meanings of those words interact in a way that'll illustrate an alternative to traditional education. Will Phillips, a 10 year old student in Arkansas, is refusing to say the pledge of allegiance because gay rights don't seem to be represented in the phrase "liberty and justice for all." Of course, instead of respecting his position or using it as a prompt for discussion, his (substitute) teacher yelled at him, subsequently causing a nice blogosphere controversy.Will’s family has a number of gay friends. In recent years, Laura Phillips said, they’ve been trying to be a straight ally to the gay community, going to the pride parades and standing up for the rights of their gay and lesbian neighbors. They’ve been especially dismayed by the effort to take away the rights of homosexuals ” the right to marry, and the right to adopt. Given that, Will immediately saw a problem with the pledge of allegiance.
“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”
Read the full story: http://www.arktimes.com/articles/articleviewer.aspx?ArticleID=2f5d7a3b-c72a-446b-8d20-3823aa79c021
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Dana Bennis
Nov 17, 2009 - 07:42 AM
Just saw CNN’s interview with Will and his Dad, real glad the mainstream media picked up on this. What was interesting to me was that John Roberts, the CNN host, couldn’t help laughing in response to a couple of Will’s very mature comments. It’s understandable in a sense - our society largely separates young people and adults such that cross-generational discussions about serious issues are few and far between. Yet young people do have insightful things to say, as Will so excellently demonstrates.
Here’s the video, courtesy of Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/12/10-year-old-wont-pledge-a_n_355709.html