What Would You Do?

[AceArcher]

The most important things any of us can do when we are raising our kids is to teach them how to be good people.

Some of the core responsibilities of a "good" person in my opinion are.

1) curiosity / a desire and ability to learn

2) tolerance / you must tolerate those different from you so that you can learn from them

3) persistance / the drive to keep going

4) positive attitude/ Can do attitude.

5) critical thinking / how to think for themselves, not just go with the flow.

I think it's also important to recognize that this is really 2 questions and not 1.

1) How do we feel as parents that your son is being asked to recite our pledge in spanish.

2) and is it an actual good learning / tool / aide to help someone learn spanish.

Undoubtably one can say yes to number two, it's a way to associate words of a different language to a known set of words. Thus making inflection, tone, things that are more easily understood in spanish.


On the first question you can really take it both ways.

Is there some big "plot" to turn us all into euro citizens... probably not.

are the spanish people trying to take over the world... probably not.

Is it respectful to say the american pledge in spanish/german/french etc. Me personally i think it's even more respectful than saying it in english. (your saying its not the language but the pledge that is important.)

Is it a little awkward ... certainly so.

I think i look at this situation and i say... Praise your son for having the conviction and the courage to refuse. I would also say that you should encourage your son to understand that from a teaching perspective there is nothing wrong or immoral with him reciting the pledge in german / spanish / french etc.

A real fact of life is that in the future he will need to be comfortable working with many people from many different backgrounds. What better way to make him comfortable than by him putting himself in their "shoes" for a second.