Flag

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The Green School, like others, was marked by the American flag which floated from the building. However, a flag may not have been an original feature of the Green School. The Fifth Street School in New Bedford is believed to have been the first school in America to fly the flag daily beginning May 11, 1861, and only gradually thereafter did other schools begin to adopt the practice. In the late 1880s, The Youth's Companion, a national children's magazine published in Boston, inaugurated the schoolhouse flag movement, encouraging all public schools to fly the American flag. Renewed impetus was provided the movement in October, 1892, with the 400th anniversary of the landing of Columbus, an event The Youth's Companion urged schools to recognize by flying a flag. The Green School certainly had a flag by 1894, the year in which all Middleborough schools which lacked one were finally outfitted.

In 1902, the Middleborough School Committee and Superintendent drafted a list of 28 so-called “flag days” for the use of the local schools. “On these days it is expected that the flag will be displayed and lessons appropriate to the occasion given”, with the first half hour of each day designated for these lessons. “A deeper impression, it is believed, will be made upon the pupil and more significance be given to the occasion than if the flag is displayed every day.” Accompanying these exercises was the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, written in 1892, and probably introduced into Middleborough Schools shortly afterwards.

Though Massachusetts state law in 1935 required the display of the American flag in all schoolrooms and weekly conduct of the Pledge of Allegiance, Middleborough schools were unaffected as for many years prior they had fulfilled these guidelines and performed the Pledge on a daily basis.