Legally, I am under the impression that it is optional. It is one of the protected rights of children. However, whether institutions actually honor that right is an altogether different matter. There are many rights that students have in public schools that are not honored. Also, this only applies to public schools, obviously. A private school can make what rules it wants.
However, it is de facto not very optional since I've never heard of a school informing students that it is optional. Much like I learned afterward that other aspects of my education were either optional or I could have insisted that they could not be factored into my grade (that was New York specific state laws though, not country-wide), but since I didn't know my rights, I didn't effectively have them. This is a common problem for children. The issue in the latter case is that NY has (or, at least had, an interesting law that grades in classes had to reflect the teacher's estimate of the student's ability in the subject matter the class claimed to be covering and could not be affected by other factors. That is, they could not dock your grades for things like discipline, attendance, or other academic performance unless it was explicitly a part of the subject of that class. I did not know this though at the time, which was extremely annoying, as it meant I could not get out of the extremely painful and time-wasting penmanship I was forced to do in my Middle School science class for no good reason other than that I had a Middle School science teacher who was very finicky about exactly how we did things. But I couldn't take advantage of my rights as I didn't know I had them. Same for the pledge.
Children do have some interesting free speech protections (and some lack thereof) while in public schools. But pretty much nobody will tell them that, and how are they supposed to find out they have them?
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Date: 9/1/11 09:08 pm (UTC)From:However, it is de facto not very optional since I've never heard of a school informing students that it is optional. Much like I learned afterward that other aspects of my education were either optional or I could have insisted that they could not be factored into my grade (that was New York specific state laws though, not country-wide), but since I didn't know my rights, I didn't effectively have them. This is a common problem for children. The issue in the latter case is that NY has (or, at least had, an interesting law that grades in classes had to reflect the teacher's estimate of the student's ability in the subject matter the class claimed to be covering and could not be affected by other factors. That is, they could not dock your grades for things like discipline, attendance, or other academic performance unless it was explicitly a part of the subject of that class. I did not know this though at the time, which was extremely annoying, as it meant I could not get out of the extremely painful and time-wasting penmanship I was forced to do in my Middle School science class for no good reason other than that I had a Middle School science teacher who was very finicky about exactly how we did things. But I couldn't take advantage of my rights as I didn't know I had them. Same for the pledge.
Children do have some interesting free speech protections (and some lack thereof) while in public schools. But pretty much nobody will tell them that, and how are they supposed to find out they have them?