To the editor:

What’s in a pledge?

So, veterans think that children should continue to be made to recite the Pledge of Allegiance after sixth grade. I would be curious to know how many adults who are not elementary school teachers do this. I’m sure there may be some real patriots who get up every morning, go out on the front lawn, hoist the flag and salute while they pledge allegiance. More power to them. Especially if they do it with nobody telling them to.

Problem is, when you extract a pledge from someone by coercion or force, it means absolutely nothing. A pledge is made voluntarily, from one’s own heart, and kids, once they are old enough, begin to realize the emptiness of the gesture they are making every morning before class. After enough of them refuse to join in, and enough of them begin to sneer at those innocent enough to still place their hands over their hearts, the teachers must consider it better to cut their losses and try to instill civic virtues in a more mature way, by letting the kids know what it means to have a democracy and what is required of a citizen in a free society. If that works, then perhaps those kids will recite the pledge on their own, or better still they will begin to live to the standards that have been ingrained in them at school.

Let the children be, trust the teachers. They have enough to do keeping up with the federal education regime — but that’s another letter.

Bob Gent,

Lawrence