I Pledge Allegiance

Rating:
Summary: Very good but slightly deficient
Review: Nicely written however it doesn't have depth about the nitty gritty on the pledge's author (a socialist who wrote the pledge to promote socialism in the most socialistic institution -government schools). "Nationalism" was the name of Bellamy's socialist movement and he was a vice president of its socialist auxiliary group. Their members wanted the federal government to nationalize most of the American economy. Bellamy saw government schools as a means to his socialist "Nationalism." The original socialist salute to the U.S. flag resembled the salute of the monstrous National Socialist German Workers' Party. As the only person who collects, exposes and writes about the frightening historical photos of the original socialist salute to the U.S. flag, I think that more books on the pledge should examine that "dark side." More books should examine the issue of whether the pledge should be scrapped, particularly for young children in government schools. The pledge's author lived until 1931 - long enough to see a similar salute and a similar philosophy espoused by the National Socialist German Workers'Party.

Rating:
Summary: I pledge
Review: The author, June Swanson is a historian with the pictures done by freelance artist Rick Hanson. I Pledge Allegiance consists of forty pages with the first printing completed in 1990. This is a children's book offering easy to understand background on the history of The Pledge of Allegiance. The idea behind the book is to help children learn more about what they are reciting daily in their respective classrooms.

The book begins with the 1880s as Henry Ford is building a buggy that runs on gasoline and electric lights coming into homes. Most of the pages contain a paragraph with a matching image, such as the skyscraper that stood eleven stories high being built in Chicago. Next the frontiers were becoming States. In 1888 there was a children's magazine called, the Youth's Companion that was delivered weekly through out the United States. " It was filled with adventure stories".

The text within these pages has the key words to learn in bold - pledge, allegiance, Republic, Nation, indivisible, liberty and Justice. While the first four words were used within the same page to make comparisons of the meaning, the others needed one to two pages to guide the students. Republic was explained as a kind of government where everyone can vote with Nation being another term for country. The illustrations show the students in the classroom, people voting and the White House. Indivisible is when something cannot be divided or pulled apart. The illustration shows a war between the northern and southern states as an example.

Most of this was difficult for my son to absorb, partly due to his disability and also he was not interested in learning this in one session. It helped to go over a few pages in I Pledge Allegiance daily so he could comprehend it fully. The students in the book all knew that liberty meant freedom and then learned that Justice was about being fair with the same laws for everyone. " The children now understood that they were promising to help the government of the United States give freedom to all and treat people.