Pledge Across U.S. Planned for Friday

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige has called on U.S. schoolchildren to simultaneously recite the pledge of allegiance on Friday, encouraging a dramatic return to a sometimes-ignored patriotic ritual.

In a message sent Tuesday to as many as 100,000 school principals, Paige encouraged them and their students to recite the pledge beginning at 11 a.m. PDT Friday, and at corresponding hours in the country’s other time zones. The event, suggested by an Orange County woman, has been dubbed “Pledge Across America.”

At the White House, President Bush will put his hand over his heart and say the pledge during a reception marking Hispanic Heritage Month.

“It’s an opportunity for American schoolchildren to be a part of a nationwide display at this time as people ask, ‘What can we do to help the United States?’ ” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Wednesday.

Delaine Eastin, California’s superintendent of public instruction, encouraged schools to participate in a memo sent Wednesday to all district and county superintendents.

The California Education Code, she noted, requires that “there shall be conducted [daily] appropriate patriotic exercises” in every public school in the state. The pledge of allegiance satisfies that requirement.

Eastin emphasized, however, that school officials should respect the wishes of any students who choose, because of religious or personal beliefs, not to participate and to express their patriotism in other ways.

Those sorts of objections have put the Pledge of Allegiance out of favor in some schools because of the oath’s description of the United States as “under God” and the perception by some that reciting it is forced speech. But many students in public and private schools still recite the pledge daily. Friday, administrators said, will be no exception.

“Anything we can do to bring this country closer together for a unified cause is good,” said Robert Nero, superintendent of the 6,200-student Bassett Unified School District in the San Gabriel Valley. “Certainly, if this is something against someone’s religion, it’s not a mandatory thing. But we’ll encourage all students and staff to participate. That’s the beauty of America--you have a choice.”

At St. Brendan’s, a Catholic elementary school in Los Angeles, students will recite the pledge twice Friday: once, as usual, in their classrooms, and a second time in the school’s courtyard at the appointed hour.

“We don’t have anybody who sits out,” said Sister Marta Ann Cota, the principal. “They’re very patriotic, as their parents are.”

But at New Roads, a progressive private school in Santa Monica, school head David Bryan declined the Education secretary’s invitation. English and history classes have analyzed the pledge’s language, but a mass recitation is not something the school encourages.

“Not that we don’t believe in America and the freedoms that we have here, but the idea of expressing one’s freedom by everybody doing the same thing, at the same time . . . creates a tension in my mind,” Bryan said.

The Los Angeles Unified School District was also urging its schools to participate. Even in San Francisco, a city not known for flag-waving conformity, the district was hurriedly attempting to spread the news of the synchronized pledge to its 116 schools.

In the context of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and their aftermath, Paige’s plea makes sense, district spokeswoman Jackie Wright indicated. In other circumstances, she said, “I think there would be a definite pause for questioning why the secretary of Education would ask that this be done.”

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Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki contributed to this report.