That’s interesting. I actually happened to be one of the students who led the morning announcements, and it never occurred to me until years later that the moment of silence was supposed to be an opportunity to pray.
It absolutely was supposed to be used for prayer. I got yelled at for reading a book during my high school’s “moment of silence.”
I graduated from a small rural school district in 2003. We had a moment of silence after the pledge, but that was it. On 9/11 our principal did give a rather strange speech involving terrorism, God, football, & America over the intercom. Also for the rest of that year announcements & memos tended to conclude with the phrase “God Bless America”.
The surpsise prayer at my graduation really pissed me off. We had half a dozen rehearsals (2 in full cap & gown) that including everthing from the pledge, the national anthem, and the school song (which none of us had ever heard before) to every speech being read in full. No mention of a prayer; nothing in the programs about one. At the actual ceremony however after pledge, anthem, and school song our class advisor introduced the head of the Christian youth group to give a prayer. Which she did, an actual prayer, not a speech that just happened to mention her god. :mad: Nobody was given any warning or opportunity to object (unless of course they wanted to walk off the stage then and there). I just sat down while she was speaking (everyone else was still standing from the pledge & stuff).
One morning both of the students usually did the announcements happened to be absent. I was in the office (my homeroom teacher sent me on an errand) and one of the secretaries (the oldest one who worked for the principal) asked my to do them; which I did. When it got to the Pledge (which I didn’t usually say at all) I omited the “under God” part. I noticed some confused looks from some of the people in the office. After I was finshed she took me aside, said I did very well, and kindly asked it if “forgot something”. I pretended not to know what she was talking about. Finally she told me I forgot to say “under God” and I told her I did that on purpose, because “there isn’t one”. 
She gave me the “you’ve just sprouted two extra heads and they have horns” look, but didn’t say anthing further.
I would have commandeered the podium and explained that they were violating the first amendment.
I know this is GQ, but we have enough GD-type statements not to respond as such.
And I would commandeered the podium and started a riot by actually reading the text of that amendment.
It still bothers me to this day that the method to keep from abridging the students’ rights to freedom of religion was to take it away from the adults.
At graduation of all places, we shouldn’t have the stupid “BUT THE CHILDREN” crap. Come on, the majority of students are legal adults, and the influence of a single prayer is going to be minimal.
As for taking away the moment of silence: no mention of God is made. It’s the ultimate in not forcing a religion, as any religion that wants to can take advantage of to pray, and any non-religion can do whatever the hell they want. Are we going to argue that meditation is inherently religious now?
There’s a certain subset of people that seem to want to actually stop religion, rather than respecting the freedom of it. Until these people are stopped from making legal decisions, I see no reason to eradicate their opposites, as both are attempting to control others’ religious expression. You need one to balance out the other.
I haven’t been in a classroom in twenty years, but I have tried to keep track of these things. I think that these laws requiring a moment of silence are still on the books.
I agree that that was what many on the Religious Right were hoping for, but that was not what the law specified. There was no stipulation about how that moment should be used. Your teacher was wrong.
It probably did many people. It was certainly against the law on a school sponsored event. I have been subject to the same crap those times when I had to work at graduation – not just at the ceremony itself, but working with getting the seniors ready to march onto the field. The other teacher involved was very aware of my objections. That is one of the two times that I left my post of duty – an offense for which I could be fired.
The other teacher was reprimanded.
I am a Christian.
I never said anything remotely like ‘But the children!’. I said I would have stormed the podium and given a speech on the first amendment- not for the sake of the children but because it was a violation of the law/
Did you miss my first post in the thread? Where I mention my yarmulke and saying a blessing before I ate?
I don’t want to eradicate religion. I want to uphold the first amendment.
They are. It’s called the first amendment. Anyone who wanted to pray at graduation was allowed to do so.
It became an issue when the school made the prayer a part of the program. That’s the government imposing religion, and it’s prohibited by the same constitution. (Can you imagine the outrage if that prayer had been a reading from the Koran?)
Is it really so hard to distinguish these two cases? Or to understand why allowing the first is extending freedom, and allowing the second is curtailing it? I have this argument with people all the time, telling me that the government has outlawed prayer in the schools–from people who really ought to know better.
Well New York had the Regent’s Prayer;
It was the specific prayer at issue in Engel v. Vitale.
Yes, the majority of students were legal adults. Legal adults whom the administration went out of their way to keep from finding out about this single prayer and making it impossible for anyone to object without causing a scene.
A “moment of silence” - probably always Constitutional.
Lawmakers saying that one of the things one might do during that moment is pray - probably always un-Constitutional.
CMC fnord!
Uh, what? In Wallace v. Jaffree, the Court struck down a “moment of silence” as unconstitutional.
A student led the class in prayer on 9-11, when I was in high school in rural Michigan. The school was overwhelmingly Christian and I was one of the only atheists there. He didn’t get in trouble for it, although I was upset with him.
Grad of early 1970’s, no classroom prayer ever, no moment of silence. I think one teacher offered a prayer once for the Grads who were still missing or died in the Viet-Nam War, at a game or some time we were gathered together.
I remember a case like that at a local school.
The teacher at the podium suddenly tossed in something like “ask God’s blessing at our recent graduates now in Vietnam, some of whose lives have been given up …”
Then “wasted!” came from somewhere in the group of students. The teacher whirled around and demanded “What was that? Who said that?” and a student in front answered “dunno who it was. But what they said was that their lives were wasted in Vietnam.”
Before the teacher could respond point an elderly man in the audience jumped up and screamed “how can you say they were wasted? Defending our country in never a wasted life!”
Then another audience member jumped up and yelled “How are they defending our country in some jungle 8,000 miles away? There aren’t any Vietcong invading here in Minnesota, but our Minnesotan kids are dying over in Vietnam!” By then about half the audience was on its’ feet, screaming at each other and getting ready to start throwing punches.
The Principal rushed to the podium, pushed the teacher away, yelled “Quiet! Everybody sit down! We will now proceed with the business.” and then went on. That teacher was not allowed back to the podium at all.
From the principal’s son, we learned he spent the rest of that evening and breakfast the next morning answering phone calls from the teachers union reps, the district supervisor, and various school board members. Don’t know what ever came of it … except that nobody at any school event for the rest of that year offered up any such prayers.
More specifically, they struck down “a moment of silence” in those states where the legislative record, (particularly in the actual language of the law), explicitly set forth prayer as one reason to keep the moment of silence. A state in which the “moment of silence” was ordered for students to collect their thoughts is probably not affected by Wallace, as noted by the post prior to yours. There are at least a dozen states that currently provide for a “moment of silence” in the classroom that have not been shut down by the Supreme Court. That I am aware, no challenges to any of those laws have made it to the Supreme Court, but so far, none have been struck down in the Appellate Courts. Wallace was struck down because prayer was explicitly included in the language of the law.
I was shocked when I moved to the South and started to attend school events with my wife, a high school teacher. One time I attended a faculty meeting with her (I was a substitute that day) and the Principal opened the meeting in prayer! There was also a blessing said at the prom, which we chaperoned.
I graduated in '96, and we’d have MOS if someone died, or if there was a local tragedy or something of that nature. I don’t know if that counts, though, since it was usually a dedication more than anything else. “Let’s have a moment of silence for so and so, or the victims of…blah blah blah.”
In fact, I seem to recall someone at my school died, and they did that. But like I said, I don’t know if that counts as prayer.
I’m from Minnesota and old enough to remember when public schools shut down for 2+ hours on Wednesday mornings so public school buses could take kids to their churches for parochial education. There were one or two kids who didn’t go, and I always envied them. Never saw any social negatives for them.
I had a close friend who taught elementary school in small town South Carolina into the '90s, and never stopped starting her class every day with prayer.
Folks who claim that the prohibition of faculty or administration led prayer is a violation of the freedom of religion just don’t understand the establishment clause, and ought be outed at every opportunity.
yeah Skammer… imagine my shock when i realized that after the end of every roll call we had to say a prayer… thats one of the times i realized that I was in Atlanta and not in Chicago anymore. Ironically one of my co-workers is a Vietnamese guy who doesn’t believe in organized religion. One of the Sgt. used to try to get him to say the prayer until i pointed out that being the point man in his future lawsuit against the county wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do.
tomndebb covered most of it, but read the decision again.
The SCotUS never had to consider if a “moment of silence” is or isn’t constitutional,
[RIGHT]Bold=CMC[/RIGHT]Wallace v. Jaffree was only about 16-1-20.1,
[RIGHT]Bold=CMC[/RIGHT]
The SCotUS couldn’t strike down a “moment of silence” as unconstitutional in Wallace v. Jaffree because a “moment of silence” was never an issue before them.
I don’t feel like tracking it down but, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that Alabama 16-1-20 is still the state law.
I’m not sure how a well written “moment of silence” law (maybe Alabama 16-1-20? ;)) would raise any Constitutional question(s).
At best you could argue that it’s wasting student’s valuable classroom time, but I’m not seeing what part of the CotUS that violates.
CMC fnord!