A 6-year-old Florida boy was admonished publicly in front of the rest of his classmates when he took a knee during the Pledge of Allegiance.
Eugenia McDowell said that her son hadn’t told her that he planned to take a knee during the pledge, but she knew he had been watching the NFL protests and the controversy surrounding them.
According to McDowell, she didn’t learn about her son’s actions until she received a text message from the school: “I knew where he had seen it [going down on one knee], but I did tell him that in the classroom, we are learning what it means to be a good citizen, we’re learning about respecting the United States of America and our country symbols and showing loyalty and patriotism and that we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
Pasco County School District Spokesperson Linda Cobbe said that the school has a policy that students need a letter from their parents in order to be exempt from participating in the pledge, but McDowell said she was unaware of the policy.
Now, McDowell is hoping for a public apology from the teacher who called her son out, since the admonition was made in public.
“I wanted an apology to my son in the same manner that she called him out for kneeling. I also wanted to know if she would be remorseful. If she demonstrated that, then I would have been okay with him remaining in her class,” she said.
She also noted that her son had been moved to a different teacher’s class on Wednesday.
