As the daily reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance blares over the loudspeakers, the classroom is silent. Most students stand silently, some with their hands on their hearts and others with their hands dropped by their side. Those remaining stay seated quietly at their desks. But the room remains completely silent.

As of this school year, I have never heard someone say the pledge aloud. While it does seem odd, especially since students said it aloud everyday in elementary school, I do not see it as a problem. While I believe that being respectful of the flag and the country is important, it is not necessary to be saying the Pledge everyday in school.

Since elementary school, students have been taught to stand with our right hand on our hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. As an elementary school student, too young to understand, the only information I could grasp from that pledge was that it was about America. I didn’t know what “the Republic” was, or what the definition of “Liberty and Justice” was. But, despite not knowing what it meant, my classmates and I all recited it each morning. 

As the years went on, I noticed that not as many people were saying the Pledge of Allegiance. In many of the middle school classrooms, homeroom teachers  just asked that students be respectful, but we were not necessarily obligated to recite the Pledge. From my experience, being respectful to these teachers meant looking up from what you were doing, being silent, or standing up and turning towards the flag.  

I think that this idea should be carried on throughout our middle school and high school careers. As we are now more mature and knowledgeable, students are more aware of what the pledge stands for and what it means to us on an individual, personal level. Since everyone will have a different idea of what it means to respect the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance, the only important thing is that respect is universally shown, even if that means it is silent.