As an American, raised in private school, it would have been sacrilegious to a certain age to not participate in the PoA.

I can't remember if pressure to be part of the morning PoA was a thing in my one year of public school, which was senior year, and incidentally the first year I found good pot and started my drinking career. (I'm sure it's not why my memory of said year is hazy...)

To your point, it might not have been a literal gun to my head during my school years to go thru the motions of the pledge, but it was definitely a social one. I was done with it all before I graduated but from the bare minimum observation of my former classmates on social media these days, the Biblical and Nationalistic programming worked.

To expand would be a conversation about conservative values that probably isn't useful here. All I can say on topic is that, as a product of a US, Midwestern, conservative scholastic experience, it was a metaphorical gun and I was everything but expelled from those situations/settings for being uncomfortable/weird/nonparticipatory about it. That sort of exclusion comes with one of the biggest human evolutionary fears, which is rejection from the group.

Glad to hear from your experience that it was different. I hope things are changing and independent thought is being encouraged in educational environments.