A woman from Los Angeles, but now living in London, has sparked debate online after revealing one ‘cult-like’ and ‘dystopian’ practice public schools in the US follow every single morning
Turns out, school life is very, very, different across the pond.
At a quick glance, the US and UK seem more alike than they are different. We speak the same language, nearly enough (we’ll not get into the whole crisp/chip thing), we both care too much about sports, and have been long-standing political allies.
When it comes to school, the only difference we tend to think of is the cool yellow bus that picks children up in the morning – which trumps our boring Stagecoach vehicles. However, there is another common practice that students have to endure in America which Brits find absolutely baffling…
Andrea Celeste is a content creator from Los Angeles, who is now living in London. She has amassed an impressive 196,000 followers for her ongoing series on how America differs from the UK.
“In England, students don’t start the day pledging allegiance to anything,” she said in a recent TikTok video. “Whereas in the US every morning on the loudspeaker, you would have a student leading all the other students to pledge allegiance to the American flag.”
Hundreds of viewers flocked to the comments section to share their thoughts – with many slamming the idea of pledging allegiance every morning. “That is just cult-like and weird,” fumed one person.
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Another agreed, commenting: “Pledging allegiance is so dystopian.” A third added: “Wait the pledge of allegiance thing is real? Do you actually recite it DAILY??? IN SCHOOL???” While a fourth wrote branded it ‘kinda culty’.
Public school students in some states (with permission from a parent) can opt out of saying the pledge. In 2022, a teacher who tried to force a student to write the Pledge of Allegiance settled a lawsuit with the former secondary schooler for $90,000 (about £70,000).
However, in the UK, many of us have memories of sitting on the rock-hard floor ready to belt out some epic tunes. Some of us would sing about cauliflowers being fluffy while others boogie along to religious hymns that we never really paid much attention to (He’s got the whole world in his hands was a bop, though).
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