Over the past few years, classrooms across America have become littered with progressive political symbols such as pride flags. A resurfaced incident from 2021 led to a California teacher being removed from her classroom after instructing her students to pledge allegiance to a progress pride flag.
The teacher, Kristin Pitzen, shared a video on social media in which she called on her class of students to pledge allegiance to the flag, which represents an assortment of LGBT identities. Historically, the pledge was reserved for honoring the United States, a patriotic act that is decreasingly performed in schools in America.
Following the incident, the Newport Mesa Unified School District launched an investigation into Pitzen. The school district acknowledged the concern surrounding the teacher’s actions while affirming the value of respecting the American flag in the classroom.
“We are aware that one of our teachers posted a video on their personal social media that caused alarm and concern related to saluting the American flag,” Annette Franco, a spokesperson for the school district, said in a statement to Newsweek. “Showing respect for our nation’s flag is an important value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. The teacher is no longer in the classroom. We follow due process and our investigation continues.”
Pitzen has since deleted her TikTok account, where she posted the original video in which she described the incident. “I always tell my class stand if you feel like, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, don’t say the words if they don’t want to,” Pitzen said in the video. “So my class decided to stand but not say the words. Totally fine. Except for the fact, my room does not have a flag.”
The teacher further described her motivations behind removing the American flag. “It used to be there,” she said in the video, pointing to an area of the classroom. “But I took it down during COVID because it made me uncomfortable. And I packed it away, but I don’t know where and I haven’t found it yet.”
However, students eventually pointed out that it was “kind of weird” to stand up and perform the pledge of allegiance without the presence of an American flag. “‘In the meantime,’ I tell this kid, ‘We do have this flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to.’ And he looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?'” to which Pitzen shows a pride flag hanging on the wall.
While many classrooms across the U.S. are filled with woke propaganda, some conservative states have notched substantial wins in their local education systems. For example, Louisiana recently passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to de displayed in classrooms.
Furthermore, The Christian Tribune reported on news of Oklahoma taking similar measures, where a top education official ordered that schools incorporate the Christian Bible into teachings in grades 5 through 12.
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Republican State Superintendent Ryan Walters expressed in a statement. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction.”
Featured image credit: Negowetti, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Parada_R%C3%B3wno%C5%9Bci_Warszawa_2021_28.jpg
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