One nation indivisible, one town torn in two

[Forkboy]

Pledge of Allegiance push shakes small Vt. hamlet

WOODBURY, Vt. - The Woodbury Village Store, the only one in town, welcomes hunters and other patrons with a hand-written sign that reads, "Shirt and pants and shoes required," in a snow-dusted North Country hamlet where many weathered homes are stooped with age.

Inside, the sleepy tableau seems frozen in time. But just up the hill, at the Woodbury Elementary School, an aggressive effort to return a daily recital of the Pledge of Allegiance to its four small classrooms has pitted neighbor against neighbor, unsettled students and staff, and spawned a vitriolic burst of incendiary name-calling.

No one in this tiny community of 809 people can recall anything like it. And the rancor has settled so deeply into the psyche here that residents and school officials say the wounds might take years to heal.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2008/11/30/one_nation_indivisible_one_town_torn_in_two/

[BlooInBloo]

1. Because everybody knows that *real* Amercians leap at the chance to recite the pledge...

And anybody not genuflecting to a member of the military is obvious a communist as well.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "You vill say ze pledge. You vill bend to ze vill of der Homeland." - Republicon Homelanders

"Screw you, you freaking fascist fail-freak homelanders. We are Americans, and America is the land of the free. You can take your stinking republicon homeland and stuff it where the Sun don't shine."

- Americans

[glowing]

3. And most likely the kids don't even care if they recite the pledge or not.

I would suspect, the waste of time it takes in saying the pledge and getting everyone settled down to begin learning.. might just be reason to say the pledge and stall the teachers day. Hey, I was a kid at one point, and even though I did well in school, I loved delays and breaks in the day.