First patriotism, now God soaked patriotism?
Our daughter just started school this year and it’s been wonderful to see her slowly get past her bashfulness. Getting her to talk, even to say if something hurt was like pulling teeth with pliers made out of play dough.
Getting her talk to even family members was about impossible and strangers speaking to her was cause to practically climb me or her father.
Now there are days when I could duct tape her mouth shut. She chatters and chatters until I’m ready to pull my hair out by the roots.
During her chattering today she mentioned a song they play over the intercom at school. She only remembered one verse from it and it was “the men who died”. In fact, that’s what she called - the men who died song. There’s only one song that I can think of that has that line in it and it’s “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood.
I know the school makes them recite the hacked pledge of allegiance and I am not happy about that, with or without the God reference. This song though is just too much. I want to go down and scream my bloody head off about it, but there’s my daughter to consider.
She can’t stand conflict to such a degree that a slap fest between two of the cats is enough to send her into a hysterical crying fit.
Christians defending their “right” to force their beliefs upon children who’ve commited the crime of attending a publicly funded school are somewhat worse than old cats smacking each other in the head.
They also have no problem targeting children. I recall from my own childhood the times when children were may to pay for what their parents believed or disbelieved. I recall children being allowed to bully other children whose parents didn’t subscribe to the dominant brand of god while the faculty pretended they couldn’t actually do anything about it.
I don’t want my daughter to go through that, especially since she’s just coming out of her shell, but damnit, I don’t want her taught that god shit at school either.
It’s a frustrating situation and I don’t know what to do. I can complain, but patriotism a state requirement. It seems to me all I’ll really do is put a big fucking target on my daughter’s back - in kindergarten. That’s just great, eh?
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If you’re right (as I suspect), and that is the song they’re playing in school, then you can use it as both a gentle lesson in patriotism and a gentle introduction to the undeniable fact that the outspoken godful are all around us.
One can staunchly support the people serving in our armed forces (Kindergarten is too young to understand the many caveats to that statement) while believing that the war shouldn’t have been started in the first place, and/or believing that it shouldn’t be continuing.
Also, I can’t imagine that Kindergarten is too early to start letting your daughter know that many people have superstitious beliefs, and that it is best to just ignore them. Not every godfree person might agree with that statement, but in the relatively vicious world of K-12, it might just be the best sort of coping strategy.