What if a school refuses to pledge its allegiance?

“Do your students say the Pledge of Allegiance?”

That was the question I posed in several ways to Marcos Aguilar, a founder and now the Tlayecantzi or “school guide” at Academia de Semillas del Pueblo Xinaxcalmecac.

You see, it’s charter school renewal season in Los Angeles and Semillas del Pueblo (“Seeds of the People”), a 318-student, K-7 charter in El Sereno, is one of 18 schools whose contracts will soon get a thumbs up or thumbs down from the Los Angeles Unified School District.

There are plenty of good questions someone might ask in trying to determine whether one or another of these independently run schools is entitled to taxpayer money.

“Are the students learning anything?” would be a good one.

But what about the trickier, more philosophical, some would say irrelevant: “To what extent do you impart the values of American democracy?”

That’s where I was going with my pledge question. It proved a circuitous route.

You probably remember Semillas del Pueblo. Aguilar and his wife, Minnie Ferguson, founded the public charter school in 2002 with 139 students and a mission to “provide urban children of immigrant native families an excellent education founded upon their own language, cultural values, and global realities.”

Last May, a KABC radio talk-show host made a big deal of the school, accusing it of fostering separatism and bigotry. Dimwits phoned the school with threats. A reporter for the radio station was assaulted and had an interview tape stolen as he left the campus. Police arrested a suspect in September, and he is scheduled for arraignment tomorrow.

Long before the arrest, I had been calling, e-mailing and dropping by the school to see for myself what was up, but my requests for interviews and visits went nowhere.

Now that Semillas del Pueblo is up for renewal, the founders, trustees and many supportive families who send their children to the school are clearly worried. So, with Caprice Young, who heads the California Charter Schools Assn., greasing my way (her group has been supportive of the school and is evaluating whether to let it stay under its umbrella), I finally made it past the reception desk.

Aguilar and Ferguson and other trustees bloomed as activists during their college days in the Chicano rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and continue to express provocative views.

Two years ago, for instance, in discussing Semillas del Pueblo and its single-minded devotion to “indigenous” children, Aguilar told an interviewer for an online UCLA education publication: “The whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the civil rights movement is all within the box of the white culture and white supremacy.... And ultimately the white way, the American way, the neoliberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”

A website for the hyperventilating Mexica movement (www.mexicauprising.net) posted Aguilar’s remarks along with a letter from the school protesting the “hate speech” against it, further enflaming blogland.

In my brief tour of the school last week, I saw nothing to suggest that such stridency has trickled down to the colorful learning areas, which sprawl one into another over two floors in accord with the school’s collaborative teaching philosophy -- Hueheutlamachilistle -- “the way of our ancestors.”

Throughout the school, the students appeared happy and engaged. A class of younger children greeted us haltingly in the four languages the school teaches: Spanish, English, Mandarin and Nahuatl -- an indigenous tongue.

With ceilings that could be 25-feet high in the main area, the school roars with children’s voices -- a pleasant roar. On my other attempts to visit, I’d glimpsed a similar scene, and also watched the children and teachers -- most of whom wear bright red T-shirts -- pound drums and dance on the small asphalt playground.

So far, the school’s test scores are lousy -- but pretty much on a par with other schools in the area’s poor, Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Sixth-graders’ test scores, however, have shown marked improvement, Young, of the charter schools group, says.

As my tour progressed, we picked up an entourage, and by the time we arrived in a conference room, guided by a nice public relations person, a dozen people, some dressed in colorful native clothing, had gathered, including the school’s visiting Zuni elder storyteller.

Parents said they loved the way the school involved the community and encouraged creativity. One mother spoke of being mistreated and discriminated against when she was a public school student. She said her child thrives at Semillas del Pueblo because it’s safe and honors the dignity of indigenous culture. The white father of a child whose mother is Latino said the school teaches respect for all cultures and peaceful conflict resolution.

The school’s philosophy draws from mystical influences, such as Nahui Olin -- “the four forces or movements” -- but Semillas del Pueblo is also training its teachers to adopt the early grade variation of the International Baccalaureate Organization, a respected program used by schools worldwide “to teach children world citizenship and encourage them to be active learners, well-rounded individuals and engaged international citizens.”

But where does the United States fit in? Conservative blogs have blasted the school for its allegiance to a fuzzy notion of pan-native wisdom, apparently at the expense of assimilation into what might be termed traditional “American values.”

As a starting point into this thorny area, I raised the question of whether students say the Pledge of Allegiance. The conversation spiraled into a rhetorical vortex where “yes” or “no” was supplanted with a scolding about mainstream public schools’ failure to teach the U.S. Constitution’s roots in indigenous cultures, a lecture on Europeans’ slaughter of this continent’s original inhabitants, a rap about the importance of “choice” as a democratic principle, assurances that the school teaches to state standards, and this: “I’m sure many gang members say the Pledge of Allegiance.”

I’m not sure it means much if a school does or doesn’t encourage students to salute the flag. But please don’t play readers of this column for chumps. Give a straight answer, move on to a deeper discussion of ideological loyalties and let readers evaluate your reasoning.

Me, I happen to think that, while flawed, the U.S. at this moment in the 21st century is about as good as civilization has gotten for most people -- and notches above most collectivist societies, indigenous or otherwise. But that’s mainly because of our freedoms, our opportunities, our ever-increasing tolerance and the penchant for risk-taking those benefits encourage.

So what the heck.

If parents want to send their kids to a school that teaches the Aztecs’ math system, and if the students are happy and learning to read and write as well as kids in regular schools nearby, why not let the experiment continue? Who can doubt that the mainstream has more to learn from the cultures it has merged with or supplanted?

Sure, Aguilar, Ferguson and company exude a kooky, cultic vibe. But they clearly care deeply about their students. It’s not as if the district offers great alternatives in poor Latino neighborhoods. Nor are the sweet-looking kids I met likely to blossom anytime soon into an organized cadre of latter-day Aztec warriors. Even if critics’ worst fears were to prove accurate, it would take a while for these students to start repossessing the homes and health club memberships of anyone whose DNA doesn’t reveal a millennium of ancestral habitation on this “stolen” continent.

After all, despite their immersion into all things indigenous, other powerful influences, good and ugly, are simultaneously working on these young souls. Even as they’re out there dancing beside the school’s beautiful two-story Aztec mural, they can’t help but glance over the chain-link to another looming message from the dominant culture: a monstrous billboard for Burger King.

To discuss this column or the question, “Should taxpayer money be spent on schools with controversial agendas?” please visit latimes.com/schoolme. Bob Sipchen can be reached at bob.sipchen@latimes.com.