The part that bugs me the most is adding “under god” in the 50s. Apparently it is some combination of 1) pretending that capitalism is virtuous and 2) sticking it to those atheist commie bastards. Pretty fucked up.
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I find it ironic that the pledge was created by a socialist, and most eagerly recited by people who insists that the government is tyranny.
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Let’s not condition the next generation to endure this level of a surveillance state. Authoritarianism from either the left or right diminishes us as individuals.
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A good fight.
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I’ve been a teacher for 27 years and we’ve been banning backpacks on and off in various ways that entire time. This is not new, but it’s usually because the rooms are over crowded with surging class sizes and they are tripping hazards. Currently we ARE allowing backpacks to keep kids from hanging out at their lockers because of Covid, and it’s so much nicer because the kids have the supplies they need and don’t lose things. But before Covid we only allowed string bags and purses for the girls because of menstrual supplies, which had been slowly morphing into those expensive Scandinavian small backpacks… it’s a slippery slope no matter what you do.
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Also see this recent post from Denmark about how to teach kids from early on to take responsbilty for themselves:
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Well, that is an improvement. At least it’s not another war on an yet another abstract noun. You can see and touch backpacks. /s
Or fewer, even. 
(Pedant Pendant in use. Can’t help it.)
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In its original form, the Pledge was accompanied by the Bellamy Salute (named for the Pledge’s author).
In 1942, Congress decided that wasn’t a really good look, and changed the Flag Code to the current hand-over-heart gesture.
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Here’s what Eisenhower said about the addition of “under God”:
“In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.”
I prefer your interpretation.
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Yeah, obviously if they had rules against bringing guns to school, she wouldn’t have done it, so they just need to ban guns at school…
Banning backpacks is a good way to make it look like you’re doing something to appease the parents who demand action but are unwilling to devote any more resources to actually make anything that would really make a difference happen.
Want to make a safe school? You could design a safe school with bullet proof walls that was still light and airy, with a lot of bullet proof glass windows. You could create a safer environment by blocking access to the campus from the community with landscaping and barriers that aren’t chain link fence.
But we’ve decided that our kids aren’t worth this.
Let’s be honest here: most violence is tied to poverty. We could ensure that the poor in our communities have the resources they need to survive and even thrive. That would reduce not only violence in the schools, but also violence in the community. But we’ve decided that we want the poor to be poor so we can lord it over them.
Yes, some violence is tied to people who loose their grasp on reality. Although honestly, they are more likely to be victims than perpetrators. But still, we’ve decided that mental health isn’t worth it.
Oh, and if we ban guns today, there will still be the threat until today’s high schoolers are in the nursing home; so that’s not a short term fix.
So if we’re unwilling to do anything constructive about the problem because of the cost or because we want to watch people suffer, but action must be done, then I guess doing something stupid is the only course of action we have left.
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God forbid what they will do to stop kids from conceal carrying those weapons.
I guess those kids won’t have to worry about what to wear to school anymore.
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The kids are alright.
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FTFY
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School uniforms and stripper bags. Classy.
Stripper bags?
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In the same way that polio is still a threat while the first kids who got polio vaccines are in nursing homes today. That is, stopping the supply of guns and reducing the numbers out in the wild will start paying off today even if it will take decades to reduce them to a fraction of what we have today.
And just tighter gun regulations that would either make people be more careful with guns, deter ownership by those who won’t put in the effort, and effectively ban those who demonstrate they can’t would also help.
A 13 year old kid got a hold of a gun. That she brought it to school is almost immaterial: she could have brought it to the mall or a park or any other public place to shoot people including her schoolmates. She could have committed suicide in her own home. The problem is not with the backpack or the school, the problem is she was 13 and able to possess a firearm while not under adult supervision. The registered owner (which should be universally traceable but is not) of that gun should go to jail and any adults even peripherally involved should have a lifelong ban on gun ownership. If you can’t keep guns from children then you simply can’t have guns.
More broadly, if a gun is used in a crime or in possession of someone it shouldn’t be, the gun’s legal owner should be responsible. Whether that is an individual, a gun store, or a manufacturer, the last known legal owner is responsible. You have 24 hours to make a police report if your gun is stolen or you are responsible for it, and when you do so, that triggers an investigation into whether you were storing it irresponsibly (spoiler: probably yes). A gun stolen from your nightstand? You don’t get to own a gun again.
Nobody here is saying “the school should ban kids from bringing guns to school”, that is just as dumb as when republicans say “you should ban criminals, not guns”. But we can make serious anti-gun-violence laws and they would have a significant effect. Not magazine limits and bump stock bans which honestly aren’t going to do much. Background checks would help, but they would help a lot more in conjunction with overall tighter restrictions.
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So frustrating as a parent. When my middle-aged child was going through high-school they had recurring back problems from the weight of the books they lugged back and forth (born right on the cusp of their year, so the youngest in their grade and the shortest). Their backpack was on the order of 30lbs… I doubt they’d even have been able to hold all the books they were required to carry home every day from the various AP classes they were in (each one requiring a separate composition notebook of course).
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Obviously, it’s Critical Race Theory /s
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At my school there was a gun smuggled in a kid’s pants. So logically, they banned pants.
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