Respecting Students' Rights

I was having an online discussion with a teacher who feels that it is okay to force her students to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.  

She seems to be a very well-meaning and caring teacher. She loves her students. She buys them supplies if they need them and even brought donuts one day this week. She also believes that posting that Bible verse is the equivalent of another teacher putting up a poster on The Big Bang Theory. She doesn’t see the difference between a matter of faith and a matter of science. 

She feels, and I am not belittling this, that she is doing the right thing by making her students stand for the Pledge. In 1943, this was the middle of World War II, the Supreme Court held in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, that students cannot be forced to say the Pledge. For a good discussion of this check out this link to Constitution Daily a publication of the National Constitution Center. 

What she sees as promoting respect and patriotism I see as forcing conformity. The symbol of the flag and the Pledge are being privileged above the actual freedoms they are meant to represent. You cannot force someone to be patriotic. The best you can do is force that person to perform the rituals of the “patriotic” act you wish them to conform to. When I pointed out that she was breaking the law, she said in that case she was a “law breaking rebel.” She said this without seeing the irony.

  

I am not sure how to talk to people who are so blinded by their personal beliefs as the teacher I had the online discussion with. I don’t want to verbally attack her, but I cannot seem to make a dent in her deeply held belief that she has every right to be that “law breaking rebel” she described herself as. How do I get her to see that while she loves he students—and I believe she does—she is not respecting them? She ended he part of the conversation curtly. I ended mine with the sincere hope that she does not get sued.