You may have seen it every day - I'm sure most of us did - but times have changed.
First, as I said, SCOTUS decided in 1943 that requiring a student to say the pledge or salute the flag violates the First Amendment. When I was in high school, we had one student in the class who was a Jehovah's Witness. When it came time to recite the Pledge in the morning, he remained seated. There was nothing the teacher could do about it.
Second, the US Flag Code says that the flag is to be flown at public schools, and if you drive by any public school you'll see a flagpole out front. The code does NOT call for the flag to be displayed in every classroom; that's a decision for the local school board to make. Years ago, flags were displayed in the classroom in all but the poorest districts. Over the years, as school budgets began to tighten, some districts started making the decision not to put a flag in every classroom because that was one less thing to maintain and the money was needed elsewhere. The practice started to spread, and today, in schools that don't have flags in the classroom, if the pledge is recited (and it's not a requirement to do so), the students turn to face the flagpole.
There is no leftist plot to remove flags from public schools - the flag will always fly outside the school. What happens inside the school has become a matter of economics.
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