Peer pressure, resistance, and violence: recommended reading for everybody
<The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.
Yes, it's fiction. So is Exodus and Atlas Shrugged. Sometimes you have to go to fiction to get at the truth about human behavior.
I encourage the moment of unremarked silence --- ". . . one nation, _________, indivisible . . ." --- on the Pledge issue. Partly out of respect for a common ritual, but mostly because I don't want my children beaten up on the playground later. (My son had rocks thown at him in the attempt to get him to adopt Christianity in elementary school.) There is no discussion of the Pledge, its meaning, or the voluntary nature of its recitation in the classroom by anyone.
Regards--
Mary Anne