My money is on a threatened lawsuit by Wednesday (from the Charlotte Observer)
After days of public debate over the appropriateness of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg student saying the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish, Superintendent Peter Gorman has decided it will be recited only in English at graduations and other districtwide events.
"Upon further reflection, we believe that as a symbol of American democracy and as a pledge of loyalty to our nation, the pledge should be recited in English only from here on out," Gorman said in a statement.
"I'm not telling individual classrooms, dual-language programs and foreign language schools that they can't use certain tools for instruction," Gorman said.
Instead, the guideline — which does not need school board approval — will apply to events such as graduations, board meetings, student achievement celebrations and teacher award programs.
The controversy began Monday at the CMS midyear graduation. Nineteen-year-old Jose Velasquez, an immigrant from El Salvador who was graduating from Garinger High, agreed to a school staff request that he recite the pledge in English and Spanish.
You know that the ACLU will not approve of this, feeling that it is discrimanatory and doesn't respect diversity, but, to hell with them. All these leftist activists constantly talk about, and sue over, respect for other cultures. Well, how about respecting our culture, which is one that is English speaking, particularly as it applies to the Pledge of Allegiance.
Some people are upset, because they do not speak English. Guess what? They are in America. Learn English to converse.
Of course, it matters not to the ACLU that the Pledge will only be required to be spoken in English in certain situations, which excludes the classroom. The ACLU does not like the Pledge in any school setting. The word "God" drives them nuts. As a sidebar, they must have loved the speech Indianapolis Colts president Robert Irsay made when accepting the Lombardi Trophy, which had many, many, references to Go.
The ACLU hasn't had a good Pedge case in quite awhile, so they must be chomping at the bit. Only time will tell. Fortunately, the NC branch of the ACLU is rather worthless and rarely does anything. They sure haven't bothered to uphold the Rights of the Duke Lacrosse players.
