American Student Punished for Refusing to Salute and Recite Mexican Pledge

American Student Punished for Refusing to Recite Mexican Pledge

A Texas high school student has filed a federal lawsuit against her school and her teachers after she was punished for refusing to salute and recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance.

The Thomas More Law Center filed the suit on behalf of Brenda Brinsdon alleging the McAllen Independent School District violated the 15-year-old girl’s constitutional rights when she was forced to recite the Mexican pledge and sing the Mexican national anthem.

Brinsdon, who is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and an American father, refused. She believed it was un-American to pledge a loyalty oath to another country. Ironically, the school district has a policy that prohibits a school from compelling students to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance.

This was a Spanish class assignment given by the spanish teacher - Reyna Santos. The students were to recite the Mexican pledge and sing the Mexican national anthem. The student offered to recite the American pledge in Spanish but the teacher refused. She was given an alternate assignment on the independence of Mexico, which the teacher gave a failing grade for. The students punishment was to sit in a class for a certain length of time over a period of several days to listen to other students recite the Mexican national anthem.

We have not (YET) seen the alternate assignment that was given a failing grade. So we don't know if she deserved the failing grade, or if it was a case of the teacher being improper.

The students mother is an immigrant from Mexico and the student herself is fluent in Spanish. So this is not a case of a student not wanting to do the project because she couldn't do it ... it was a matter of ethics and loyalty for her. And considering that this student is fluent in Spanish and has a mother who immigrated from Mexico, I'm wondering how on Earth she could have 'failed' the alternate assignment on the independence of Mexico. That doesn't seem likely to me.

The school excuses students from the American Pledge of Allegiance as well as from reciting text from the Declaration of Independence if the student has a conscientious objection to the recitation. So why punish this student for having a conscientious objection to the recitation of a foreign pledge of allegiance even if in a class assignment atmosphere ?

I remember having to sing O' Canada in grade school.

French bastards.

there are people who think schools are still for education purposes? lol

schools are for one purpose these days, to acclimate children to a life of serfdom they will be living when they graduate.

this teacher, like many others, is just using her power to intimidate and corrupt the students. school is about money and power overall, not education.

i hope this girl takes the school for a million dollars, but then again it will be you and i paying the bill.



why don't they fix this, because from their point of view, it isn't broken.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

I learned it by going to NHL games


Anyways, it's obvious that this student could easily have saluted and recited the Mexican pledge, but it was against her ethics and loyalties to do so. The school accomodates those students who don't want to do the American pledge or who dont' want to recite the American Declaration of Independence when it's assigned .. so they should have been more open to this student as well. And like I said .. we haven't seen the 'alternative project' that she supposedly failed ... but with her speaking fluent spanish and her mother being from Mexico, I find it suspect that she 'failed'. Sounds like it could be 'sour grapes' coming from the Spanish teacher to me.

All I can say is that Texas has some pretty fakked up school districts and you will never see a more liberal and sanctimonious bunch of teachers and administrators.

When we lived there, my kids were not allowed to get pre-k because they were not hispanic. They were not allowed to celebrate birthdays, Easter, Christmas, thanksgiving, Halloween or any other holiday because it might be " offensive" to the 33% Muslim population. Their cafeteria at school always served one meal that was dreadful but contained meat, and the "fun" meal was always vegetarian ( talk about indoctrination).

I was told that I was not allowed to send homemade cookies for snack time but Diet Coke was on the approved list of snacks.

The school district north of ours had a big fracas in the news because they allowed the Mexican kids to celebrate cinco de mayo but sent home American kids wearing US flag shirts and lapel pins. The same school district hung the Mexican flag in the school atrium but didn't allow the American flag to be hung.

I could go on and on, but needless to say, I am glad we are no longer in a Texas school district.

reply to post by FlyersFan
It sounds like sour grapes to me as well. McAllen has a majority Hispanic population and their prejudice is showing. Hopefully the court system will set the school straight!

On another note: When my daughters were in high school the school brought in two Spanish teachers directly out of university at Mexico City. One spoke very little English and the other spoke no English at all. For the first half of the school year my oldest daughter had to sit in on one of the teacher's classes and accompany her to lunch to act as interpreter until she learned to speak English well enough to get by on her own. The school gave my daughter free night classes and free summer school as well as personal reference letters applauding her in every way possible, and nominated her for many scholarships in return. My daughter didn't do it for the rewards but because she wanted to help this lady, but I thought it was bogus that the school district hired teachers that could not speak English. I should note we live nowhere near the Mexican border, but just a few miles from the Louisiana border.

reply to post by littled16

I wonder why they didn't hire some Americans who have degrees to teach Spanish or who were bilingual teachers? They went out of country? Yikes!

Schools in this country are a joke. They teach lies, pass students who can barely read just to keep up "standards" and then pull this sort of BS.

If I was this kids parents, I would sue the living hell out of the school and that teacher. Why? Because today that seems the only way to get through to people.

I'm sorry but, do we go into Mexico and force them to sing the National Anthem? Do we make them pledge allegiance to the US Flag? No, of course we don't. Hell we don't even force kids in this country to do it. So how dare this school punish this girl.

As I said, schools are not for teaching children anymore. That can be statistically proven. Just look at the quality of education from say the 50s up to today. Kids are pushed through school thanks to "no child left behind". I never ever hear of kids being "left back" anymore. Schools are there to indoctrinate our children. Get them accustomed to the Monday through Friday slave grind. Teach them to obey everything they are told.

I could go on and on but I am just pissed off right now. People in this country are so damn afraid of "offending" someone else that we've lost sight of everything.

reply to post by FlyersFan


The hell is wrong with the multicultural crowd?

My wife is Mexican and both she and I would be VERY pissed if our kid was forced to recite any pledge of allegiance against our child's will, even the Mexican one.....or the US one.

It is something you do because YOU PLEDGE YOUR ALLEGIANCE. you can't force that.

And TEXAS! OF ALL PLACES!
This is entirely unacceptable. I hope everyone involved is fired. Multiculturalism ....pffft.

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle


Agreed. Nationalist loyalty is little more than brainwashing, and it's done from a very young age. Forget fighting for what's morally right, tell them they're fighting for their country and the brainwashing kicks in. And if you object, on moral grounds, you're one of them. An enemy, unpatriotic, a terrorist, a commie, or some other nonsense. The sheep just keep on bleating.

A guy I follow on twitter had this posted and I feel it rings with many levels of truth....

"Public school education exists for one reason only - To indoctrinate children that their purpose is to serve and obey the state."

My two cents to our conversation....

SaneThinking

Good for her

Being forced or coerced to pledge allegiance to anything is just wrong but being told to pledge to another country while on home soil? and then being punished in anyway for refusing to do it?

saying the American one in Spanish would have been just as good and served the exact same purpose,
1 of 2 things is going on here, its either the teacher is pointlessly trying to get the kids to become Mexicans or this girl is being punished for not automatically doing what she was told by an authority figure.

Sad sad stuff either way

[Devil's Advocate]

Reading the title caught my attention and sent me into this thread with proverbial guns blazing. But...

...Then I noticed it was for a Spanish class so it didn't get to me as much. I studied both Spanish and French and we did things like this for both. We learned their songs, special holidays, etc. I wrote a paper once about French monuments and had an assignment to bring homemade French food. In Spanish class we learned their culture as well as their language. We even had oral exams where we were to sing Spanish songs for tests/grades.

Upon the thread title, I thought this was something everyone had to do school-wide in home room during the morning announcements or something. That would piss me off- but not just in a Spanish class.

I'll have to think about this a bit.

Sorry for the double post- my computer is in a mood today.

How many English classes on foreign soil make the students recite The Pledge of Allegiance?

Im not sure whats wrong here?

I see the word INDEPENDENT SCHOOL + SPANISH CLASS + ASSIGNMENT.

If you come to my science class and tell me you don't want to do the assignment on gravity because to you it seems unethical because you believe god is the source for gravity, well, i will fail you and make you watch other students present their properly researched assignments.

I remember singing or at least writing the national anthem of Tanzania for grade 7 assignment, heck i would sing if it is part of the assignment to pass the grade. Some people rather believe it will magically covert them to Mexican or something lol.

When I took Spanish in high school.................................we studied SPAIN, not Mexico.

Originally posted by luciddream
I remember singing or at least writing the national anthem of Tanzania for grade 7 assignment...

Exactly.
I'm not sure why everyone is overreacting here. It was just a bit of learning about another country. One could easly imagine that a non-American might be asked to learn the American pledge if they were doing an assignment about the USA, or that somebody learning about Britain in school might be asked to learn "God save the Queen".
None of this would mean anything.
Nobody expects that such bits of text are meant to be taken as genuine oaths.

I remember having to learn and recite some Shakespeare.
Nobody in class understood that to mean that I genuinely and honestly hoped to get some sleep, perchance to dream.

Originally posted by beezzer
How many English classes on foreign soil make the students recite The Pledge of Allegiance?

I honestly don't have a clue what the answer to your question is, but I can guarantee you that more foreign students learn English than American students learn a foreign language. Anyone who has been over seas in areas other than tourist traps knows this.

reply to post by FlyersFan

Let me guess....and the Mexican students dont have to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance either, right?
CrAzY.