It is difficult to say whether a common modern practice is better or worse:
there is often a flag in EVERY classroom. State government dictates the
expenditure and the size of the federal flags and their ubiquitous
placement. The omnipresent flag is viewed all the time by all children. It
still looks backward to many. The orwellian ritual then occurs via a barking
or pre-recorded voice over an intercom, often accompanied by martial music
and even bizarre video piped over school televisions.

The pledge tracks the book "1984" by George Orwell (1949).  Orwell describes
a government that uses these slogans: Freedom is Slavery; War is Peace;
Ignorance is Strength. The government bamboozled Americans into believing
that collective robotic chanting in government schools daily is a beautiful
expression of freedom. Chanters let the catch-phrase "with liberty and
justice for all" delude them from the totalitarian reality of the behavior.
Government schools maintain strength by maintaining ignorance about the
pledge's true history. Wars over the pledge coincide with never-ending wars
abroad under Bellamy's military socialism in the USA.
http://sites.google.com/site/edwardbellamysite/

Ouch. This goes into the "I-don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry-or-both"
file. See the video on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BssWWZ3XEe4

Perhaps, during the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party,
each American child began to put his left index finger under his nose while
performing the American "Nazi" salute and chanting mechanically in unison,
and thereafter goose-stepping into the school house. Francis Bellamy was
alive during the rise of the National Socialist German Workers Party.  What
did Francis Bellamy think about his pledge and it's salute, in view of the
fact that Francis Bellamy also promoted socialism in the Nationalist
movement?

America's most notorious and lasting propagandists for "Military
Socialism" and "National Socialism": Edward Bellamy and Francis
Bellamy (author of the "Pledge of Allegiance" in 1892).

In the United States and elsewhere, America's stiff-arm salute began
to spread outside of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. The gesture
was directed toward government officials who were often on stage with
the flag at mass meetings where the Pledge was led.

Bellamy's pledge was the origin of the stiff-arm salute adopted later
by the National Socialist German Workers Party, as shown in the work
of the symbologist Dr. Rex Curry (author of "Pledge of Allegiance
Secrets"). http://rexcurry.net/pledge-allegiance-pledge-allegiance2.jpg

By 1915, National Socialism in the USA had inspired propagandistic
presentations of the American flag posed favorably with a swastika and
the phrase "May our glorious flag and this lucky star guide you and
keep you wherever you are." http://rexcurry.net/swastika-flag2.JPG

Another piece of propaganda from the USA bears a swastika and the
wording: "Lucky Star - May this emblem protect you well from every
bullet, every shell." http://rexcurry.net/45th-infantry-protect-from-bullet-shell.jpg

Before WWI, one of America's leading propagandists for government was
Edward Bernays. Bernays openly sought to use social psychology,
political persuasion and advertising to construct “necessary
illusions” which were fed to the masses as “reality.” Bernays
described it as “engineering of consent.” The objective for Bernays
was to show government, government schools and government-regulated
media outlets how to gain control.
http://rexcurry.net/swastika-nazi-sozi-goebbels.html

In 1917, Edward Bernays and Walter Lippman helped Woodrow Wilson break
his campaign promises and con Americans into WWI. To that end they
used the Committee on Public Information (CPI ) also known as the
Creel Committee. They helped Wilson foment anti-German hate during
WWI. Of course, WWI led to WWII and so forth, ad infinitum, ad
nauseum. http://rexcurry.net/45th-infantry-division-swastika-sooner-soldiers.html

Bernays also created the war slogan “Make the World Safe for
Democracy” -a patriotic mantra that many stupid Americans embraced
just as they had earlier embraced Bellamy's "Pledge of Allegiance,"
America's straight-arm gesture, and mechanical chanting to flags in
mass and on cue.

Bernays and Bellamy used the technique of manufacturing ever-present
dangers and then maintaining a constant state of fear by generating
false government pronouncements that endlessly re-stated and
exagerated the threat. The modus operandi for Bernays and Bellamy was
to give those in power greater control over what Bernay's called "the
mass mind."

Bernays’ books "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and
"Propaganda" (1928) impressed Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister
for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Germany mimicked
American behavior because Goebbels learned from the behavior of
Bernays, President Wilson, and the U.S. government during World War
I.  http://rexcurry.net/swastika3swastika.jpg

In 1933, Bernays met Karl von Weigand (a German journalist) who
informed Bernays that Goebbels was using Bernays' work for Goebbels'
propaganda campaigns fomenting hate, robotic chanting, straight-arm
salutes, the use of government schools, children, and more.
http://rexcurry.net/swastika-nazi-sozi-goebbels.html

Socialists in other countries wanted to know how to brainwash a
nation. It was the same brainwashing dogma behind the Wholecaust  (of
which the Holocaust was a part): ~20 million dead under the National
Socialist German Workers' Party; ~60 million dead under the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics; ~50 million dead under the Peoples'
Republic of China.

"If I approach the masses with reasoned arguments, they will not
understand me," Hitler noted in Mein Kampf, "In the mass meeting,
their reasoning power is paralysed. What I say is like an order given
under hypnosis."

To this day, laws continue to order children to hypnotically chant in
the Pledge of Allegiance ritual each morning in many schools in the
USA. Only the gesture has changed.

Here is a video example from the World War II era.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xipJGXUWjTU

Bernays' work continued as one of the engineers of the Cold War.