More politics
Mar. 24th, 2004 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
Some of you may remember my longass post about how the Pledge is stupid and the American's Creed is better. If not, you can no doubt find it in my memories (I'm at 200 now! Go me!)
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000630.html
I love this person. Seriously.
If any further evidence is needed that the purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to inculcate mindless loyalty to the state, it can be found in the fact that many children clearly do not understand what they are saying. This can be seen in the eggcorns that they construct. My mother tells me that as a little girl she believed that there was a thing called a legiance that she was pledging to the flag. She didn't know what it was. In today's column in the New York Times, entitled Of God and the Flag, William Safire reports that as a little boy he thought that the Pledge began "I led the pigeons to the flag". In a roundabout way, I think he understood it all too well.
THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Or one of them, anyway. It's wrong, dead wrong, to teach children to say big words they don't even understand, especially if you're expecting them to promise something. If they don't understand it, why should they say it? You're making them lie, even if they'd mean the sentiment. So, of course, by the time they understand what it means, they're just numbly reciting pitterpatterbabble. Stupid, really. If you're going to say something and not mean it, it might as well be something personal, like "I love you" or "I'm allergic to mushrooms".
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000630.html
I love this person. Seriously.
If any further evidence is needed that the purpose of the Pledge of Allegiance is to inculcate mindless loyalty to the state, it can be found in the fact that many children clearly do not understand what they are saying. This can be seen in the eggcorns that they construct. My mother tells me that as a little girl she believed that there was a thing called a legiance that she was pledging to the flag. She didn't know what it was. In today's column in the New York Times, entitled Of God and the Flag, William Safire reports that as a little boy he thought that the Pledge began "I led the pigeons to the flag". In a roundabout way, I think he understood it all too well.
THAT'S EXACTLY MY POINT! Or one of them, anyway. It's wrong, dead wrong, to teach children to say big words they don't even understand, especially if you're expecting them to promise something. If they don't understand it, why should they say it? You're making them lie, even if they'd mean the sentiment. So, of course, by the time they understand what it means, they're just numbly reciting pitterpatterbabble. Stupid, really. If you're going to say something and not mean it, it might as well be something personal, like "I love you" or "I'm allergic to mushrooms".
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 03:45 pm (UTC)At age five, I knew the words of the Lord's prayer by heart (blame my mom for dragging me to church every Sunday), but do you think I had the slightest idea what the words meant? Trust me, I didn't. And since I'd learned it at such an early age, I never much thought about it - I mean, if I had to say it, I'd switch into some kind of robotic mode and just say it through. If you'd asked me what it was about, I would have had to think about it really hard for a while...
and it didn't help much anyway, at least not in the way my mom probably hoped, i.e., I have not become a good Christian, to put it mildly. Which goes to show that teaching young children things by heart they neither understand nor mean doesn't lead to anything, except, maybe, that once they're old enough to understand and/ or mean it, most of them will, instead, be bored and as far away from meaning it as ever. (Of course, there are cases where indoctrination works, but it's still all rather pointless).
Goodness. Such a long rant. And actually, I just wanted to say that I dared to add you to my friends, outta curiosity - hope you don't mind.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-24 05:40 pm (UTC)Nope, I don't mind.