Reply #26: It wasn't until I was in 7th grade that "under God" ... [View All]

[TahitiNut]

... was in the approved version. It's always sounded very awkward to me. My parents, aunts, and uncles all learned the pledge to the flag with their hands outstretched in the Nazi-like salute (sometimes called the "Bellamy salute"). I attended five different elementary schools and don't recall more than two of them as requiring the daily recitation of the PoA.

In 1942, Congress both included the pledge in the U.S. Code and specified the hand-over-heart salute. It wasn't until after then that schools began to more commonly require the recitation of the pledge. My parents, aunts, and uncles were never required to recite the pledge in public school as a regular ritual. It's a myth that schools have all adopted this practice for the last 7-8 decades or even the last 6-7 decades. It sure wasn't ubiquitous when I was in school and certainly not when my parents' generation was in school. Most of such psycho-patriotism has happened in the years subsequent to 1954.