Stuart Barry was appalled when his child came home last week with a note saying that she'd been asked to read the daily announcements over the intercom -- a high honor in elementary school -- and to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
In Spanish.
"I have nothing but praise for the school," Barry, a naturalized citizen originally from Great Britain, said. "We stumbled across it by her showing it to my wife. I went bananas."
So much so that he fired off an e-mail to officials at Southwest Elementary School and members of the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools board which can be summed up thusly: Hel-lo? Anybody home?
Teaching kids about the great American melting pot and to value difference are noble goals.
Still, there are limits. And you'd think that educators would know instinctively that having an elementary school student recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish might offend some.
"This effort at diversity insults my family as American citizens," Barry wrote. "This activity is reverse assimilation."
Feelings of concern
The principal at Southwest, Mike Hayes, reacted quickly to Barry's e-mail.
Hayes listened carefully and explained that having the pledge recited en español was part of Hispanic Awareness Month. He then told Barry that the school would not go through with it out of respect for his concerns.
Hayes said a "significant portion" of his school is Hispanic, and the idea was to celebrate that diversity.
With Hispanics making up about 11 percent of Forsyth County's population of 343,028 -- according to the most recent Census data -- that's a worthy (and defendable) goal. (Whites make up 61 percent, and blacks about 25 percent. American Indians, Asians and Pacific Islanders account for the rest.)
"We talked about it within our staff," Hayes said yesterday. "Some things are more sacred than others. If it brings about feelings of concern, then it's not going to be a celebration."
Not surprisingly, similar moves in other parts of the country have also caused debates to break out. Like it or not, immigration -- legal or not -- is a lightning rod and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future.
In early 2007, a 19-year-old native of El Salvador and a mid-year graduate of a Charlotte high school agreed to a request made by school staff to recite the pledge in English and Spanish. Some parents didn't approve, and they told Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools officials so in no uncertain terms.
Superintendent Peter Gorman decided after days of public back-and-forth that the pledge would only be said in English at graduations and other district-wide events.
Topic for discussion
Teaching kids some basic conversational Spanish as early as elementary school certainly helps them understand diversity. So, too, does teaching English to the new arrivals and the children of immigrants.
But teaching kids how to say "Hello, how are you" in another language is one thing; teaching them to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America in a foreign tongue is another.
When word about the Spanish pledge started to circulate yesterday, the school administration first tried to tamp down the controversy.
"If they didn't do it, I don't understand the point (of doing a story) about it," said Theo Helm, a spokesman for the school system.
Here's the point: The fact that officials at Southwest didn't go through with their plans isn't as important as the fact that apparently nobody thought that it might be offensive. Hayes said he didn't know whether the school would have gone through with its plan had Barry not spoken up.
Buddy Collins, a member of the school board, promised that the pledge of allegiance would be a topic for discussion at tonight's school board meeting.
"It's important to understand the concepts behind the pledge and what it means," Collins said. "It's more important to understand what it means in English. It makes more sense to me to teach that than to recite it in Spanish."
ssexton@wsjournal.com | 727-7481
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