This week’s Talkback question on the Mail & Guardian Online:
Would you encourage your child to recite the proposed pupils’ pledge?
The proposed pledge
We the youth of South Africa
Recognising the injustices of our past,
Honour those who suffered and sacrificed for justice and freedom.
We will respect and protect the dignity of each person,
And stand up for justice
We sincerely declare that we shall uphold the rights and values of our Constitution
And promise to act in accordance with the duties and responsibilities
that flow from these rights.
!KE E:/XARRA //KE
Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika
Read more
Have your say by leaving a comment below.
I guess that will be an individual’s choice. Respectfully, no child is supposed to be forced to recite that pledge, that will be wrong. Sometimes we have to learn to rescpect individual rights at the same time we should never be obstracted from doing what is good for our children.
This is perfect way to make the next generation of blacks hate the next generation of whites. It would be awful if they all sat side by side in school in perfect harmony and grew up without giant chips on their shoulders. Imagine the utopia of the next generation having no race issues? Weve gotta nip that in the bud sharpish.
After the road name changes its clear that there is an agenda in all of this, its scary but at the same time at least you cant say you werent warned in advance.
Pledge aside I’m astonished at the fundamental christianity thats coming through here. We have the right not to be christians and we dont have the right to enforce religion on anyone.
Nicola et al,
See my post of the19th, and see what Pandor have said yesterday. It is not a question of “if” our kids will be brainwashed with crapp, its only the measure of braiwashing crapp that must be decided on. Are we smoking our lunches or what. How can we allow anything as ungodly as this to be done to our kidds. Wake up!!!!
And for your and all you guilt ridden plebs’s info, I have a clear concience about the past, and realise that I can do nothing about the past but only the future. We have been through this simmilar crapp in the past, and we reaped the whirlwind. We want a better future for all of our kidds.(inclusive,all, every one, collectively, get it?) A future that the constitution promisses us and what we overwhelmingly voted for in the early 90s. No brainwashing and no racism.(maybe if I use the “k” word to describe what I think of thoughts like yours, you and all the people who want crapp like this in our schools will wake up. Wake up and stop this no-sense oath.
My daughter (14 – grade 9) suggested to me that she felt it was her right to choose whether to take the oath or not. Her objection, primarily was with the prospect of being forced to do it… and this is the crunch of the matter irrespective of whether he/she has an opinion which is for or against what is actually declared in the oath (which is another matter entirely).
I think we should be encouraging our children to think – for it is this blind, uninformed, unthinking conformance that got us here in the first place.
Nope!The pledge is a silly idead really!
Honestly, i think it’s sad and derogatry, that my 3 year old or even myself may have to stand up and apologies from something that we were not involved in, just because the colour of my skin. This is a way for the Govt to continue blaming the “Whites” for everything that has gone wrong over the past 13 years. Why don’t they concentrate on bigger issues, than making pledges to remind the rest of south africa that if you are of the lighter shade, you are responsible for every situation that does not work. There are some schools that have mentioned that when the pledge it passed only a certain group of students will have to stand up and say the pledge, now if that’s not racism, then we all live in fantasy land.
The pledge that was drafted during Kader Asmal’s term as minister was much more efficient. I dont understand why that one was scraped?!
However, the pledge is there to stay and there is no point being negative about it now, because then we will never achieve what the pledge is suppose to bring (or achieve)! so let us be positive about it,and maybe the result Minster Pandor desires will be reached?!
Below is the copy of the pledge drawn up while Professor Asmal was Minister .(Which I think is so much better)
Vow of Allegiance:
I promise to be loyal
to my country, South Africa,
and to do my best to
promote its welfare and
the wellbeing of all of its
citzens
I promise to show
self-respect ia all that
I do and to respect all
of my fellow citzens
and all of our various
traditions.
Let us work for peace,
Friendship and
Reconciliation and heal
the scars left by past
conflicts, and let us
build a common
destiny together.
Please stop strawmanning this pledge, people. If you don’t think its a good idea, either give a valid reason or admit that you do not, in fact, have a reason. By ‘strawmanning’, I mean, for example, pretending that the pledge is asking certain people to ‘apologize’ for things they didnt do. This pledge does not imply any sort of apology whatsoever.
Also, I don’t believe this pledge stands to undermine individuality as the minister has been very clear about the fact that it would never be enforced to the point that students would be compelled against their wills to recite it.
Moreover, the argument that introducing a pledge into our schools is indoctrination and is thus a bad idea is also unsound. All education is, essentially, indoctrination – working towards convincing people to believe a certain thing. Furthermore, this pledge is NOT to the ANC/ the government/ South Africa; the way I see it, this pledge is to the Constitution – a distinctly liberal set of a values originating from a rather democratic process. Moreover, the constitution is the highest law of the land – every person will have to abide by it if they are to live in this country and it is thus in their own interests for them to understand from a very early age just how important the constitution is.
This brings me to my last point. With reference to the popular criticism of the lines,
“Recognising the injustices of our past,
Honour those who suffered and sacrificed for justice and freedom”,
I’d have to say that this clause is here to emphasise the fact that the constitution was not always there and we should not take it for granted.
Essentially, to me, this pledge says “I respect the authority of the constitution and understand that it is a privilege that we have such a great constitution.” This, I think, is a very good notion for the youth of the nation to fundamentally incorporate into their ways of thinking.