Students remain divided on standing, sitting during pledge

The new NFL season is underway and players continue to kneel during the national anthem despite being told not to, and some students--likely inspired by the players--choose to sit during the daily pledge of allegiance. Furthermore, a teacher in Florida was recently reprimanded for verbally insulting such students. With the issue of refusing to say the pledge or sing the anthem again in the news, students at Airport High School are debating the issue once again.

Is kneeling or sitting during the pledge disrespectful, or is it okay? Nearly all students and teachers are American citizens and might find these things disrespectful to their country.

Kneeling during the pledge was originally started by Colin Kaepernick while he was a quarterback in the NFL. Colin Kaepernick is a mixed American citizen and was protesting police brutality when he kneeled. Kaepernick asked his friend from the military if he thought it was disrespectful, to which his friend replied no. But many people view sitting/kneeling during the pledge as disrespectful to the troops and our country.

Police brutality is when a police officer forcefully and violently (in most cases) harms someone that appears innocent, or shoots someone that is innocent. This is usually between white police officers shooting black men, therefore “Black lives matter” protest began.

Corbin W., a student at Airport Highschool, said, “I think it’s disrespectful to sit during the pledge.” Wright also said, “I support the reason they’re protesting, but I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it.”

Carson H., another student at Airport Highschool, was asked what he thought about people sitting during the pledge, to which he responded as well, “I think it's disrespectful.”

A lot of Americans said they didn’t like Kaepernick as a result of this, and that it had a bad impression on young kids, because some kids look up to him.

The NFL acted upon this and said any team that’s players kneeled would be fined. Nike made Colin Kaepernick the face of their 30 year anniversary as well, which caused a lot of backlash against Nike. This resulted in people boycotting and throwing away Nike’s products. President Trump even said “You know, some owner is going to do that. He’s going to say, ‘That guy that disrespects our flag, he’s fired,’ and that owner, they don’t know it, but they’ll be the most popular person in this country.”

It seems that most people don’t think kneeling during the pledge is good. But many people do support it as it’s one of their rights. Others don’t find kneeling disrespectful though which is why they think it’s okay.

At the end of the day, students and people have the freedom stand or sit during the anthem or pledge. Freedom of speech is an important part of American culture.

To learn more about this issue, check out the ProCon.org page about it.