I have seen the school prayer conflict portrayed as attempts to legally prevent an action to which everybody involved (i.e. both all students and their teacher) consent. If that’s how it worked, why couldn’t they pray and then not tell anybody? Or why couldn’t the students do civil disobedience type action by collectively praying with the teacher, so to speak, apparently finding the authority of the Supreme Court insufficient to get them to shut up? I mean, if teachers often can’t stop students from throwing paper balls at each other, how are they supposed to stop them from praying?
They’re not. There is no prohibition against praying in schools, no matter how often the right claims there is. (See Constitution, Amendment 1, freedom of religion)
What there is a prohibition against is the school (and even then, only public schools, as extension of the government) mandating or organizing such prayer. (See Constitution, separation of church and state clause (congress shall pass no law establishing religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof)).
Lots of folks try to rile up religious types by deliberately misstating this as a “prohibition against praying in schools.”
Here is how it worked in the Bible Belt. We would do the milk count and the Pledge of Allegiance, then the teacher would single out a victim and state that “_____ will now lead us in prayer.” There were a couple of us who would just outright shake our heads, and after that she never called on us again, but there were others who weren’t wild about it but were afraid it might get back to their parents that they had refused to do something religious. (We also had a Sunday School Count on Mondays. There were four potential things you could count: Sunday School, Church, Sunday night church, and anything you did on a night during the week related to church–some churches had Wednesday night services. The idea was to get 100% on this. So there were some pious people, and some liars, and one or two people who never raised their hands for the Church Count at all.)
This was in a public school, early 60s. When the Supremes decided it was Not OK to force people to pray in school, some of us drew a breath of relief. And the teacher came in, on the first day after this decision, and disenlightened us. “Well, we don’t care what the Supreme Court says! WE are going to pray, just like always!”
Bummer, y’know?
A couple of weeks later it turned out that someone had complained. Anonymously, I guess. So at that point, the drill became: “Anybody who does not want to participate in the prayer may leave the room now.”
And you know what? I was already insecure enough, at that age. I wasn’t going to be the first one to get up and leave the room. And nobody else was, either.
As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in schools.
The prohibition, as TimeWinder explained, isn’t against prayer, per se. It’s against school-sanctioned and school-led prayer. Having a teacher, the penultimate authority in a school (to the kids, anyway) lead the prayer transforms it from a personal conversation with God into a state-sanctioned act of conformity. Even kids who would demur if invited to prayer by their peers will usually feel compelled to join in when it’s led by the teacher.
I agree with TimeWinder on the status of prayer in public schools. There used to be something called “Meet me at the Flagpole”, which was a campaign by religious students to voluntarily meet at pray together around the flagpole before school. Student lead and intiated, and generally allowed as far as I know.
I went to a Catholic high school as one of a handful of protestants and a budding atheist, no less. Prayer happened in a routine fashion. At the start of each class, either the teacher or a designated student would lead/recite one of the standard prayers, usually Hail Mary or The Lord’s Prayer which Catholics seem to call the Our Father and omit the last two lines for some reason. Some classes didn’t start with a prayer, but most did. Every month, there was a mass conducted in the gym, attendance required but active participation wasn’t for us heretics, anyway. There were also Religion classes, taught by a Brother or a Sister, usually half a grading period for one hour a day. The other half of the grading period we got P.E. instead.
How many of these prayers came true?
Actually that is how it should be, If the people (teachers and/or teachers) desire to pray to their Father Creator, no one should stand in their way, but it should be a free will decision, not forced, but not obstructed either.
Not modding, since I’m not a mod, but I will observe that this is General Questions, not Great Debates.
Mom and dad were born in the mid-50s and late-40s respectively. Both attened public school in small towns/rural areas in the Mid-Atlantic states. Dad’s grammar school days began with the Lord’s Prayer being said after the Pledge of Allegiance (with no mention of God until 2nd grade) and someone would be called to read a passage from the Bible. He doesn’t remember anybody being excused or leaving the room. By high school this was no longer the case and they only had generic “non denominational” prayers at things like graduations, football games, or assemblies (or after Kennedy was shot). Oh, and for the atomic bomb duck-an-cover drills they were taught to say the Lord’s Prayer while cowering under their desks.
Mom doesn’t remember any daily prayers (& apparently Grandma would’ve blown a gasket if there were), but again “non denominational” prayers were said at school events.
I’m 25 so the closet we ever got to organized prayer in class was a moment of silence. There was a Christian Club, but that was an after-school club. We did have to learn about the importance of “spiritual health” in health class (which was defined as the ability to believe in some force :rolleyes:). And they snuck a student-led prayer into my graduation ceremony without warning anywone. :mad:
The question was answered in the first reply.
That allows jokes, but not snark or witnessing.
Yes. Yes a hundred times over.
I was in high school in the late 90s. I’m a religious guy, but the “Meet me at the Flagpole” movement always disgusted me. It was fairly prevalent at my school.
Very few people object to religious people taking time for prayer. A lot of people (myself included) get very agitated and nervous when certain groups try to make a religious observance an “Institution Sponsored!” event.
Look, if you have a faith - that’s great. But do you really think trying to tie it to a government or a state is a good thing?
Do you really want a state religion?
Do you really think that trying to force people that don’t believe that religion into some rote prayer will do any good?
By forcing the socially awkward feelings of abstaining from said state prayer will anyone have an honest conversion?
If you believe in a faith, any sort of socially pressured group prayer should disgust you. If you believe, it’s for good reason, right? This belief should be plausible for any honest seeker, right? Any attempt to coerce should be contemptible, right?
So just leave the fucking religion out of all state institutions, including (and especially) schools, where the attendants are young and probably aren’t ready to maturely assert their independence.
Maybe because those lines weren’t there in the Bible originally, either in the version in Matthew or in Luke. They were first added about the 2nd Century, probably taken from Chronicles 29:11.
Ignorance fought.
Northeastern Pennsylvania - late 60s/early 70s - even long after it was fashionable or even legal. It varied slightly year to year. The usual form in grade school was that we would do the Pledge and then at the conclusion of the announcements over the loudspeaker, whoever was giving those announcements would close with the Lord’s Prayer. We didn’t have to say it as we did the Pledge (but we could); just expected to bow our heads and remain silent.
In Junior High it was up to the home room teacher. The Pledge was still a must but if you had a moment of silence, the Lords Prayer, or just nothing at all depended on who you drew as a home room teacher that year. One teacher who required it was called to task for it several times but as far as I know the big framed Lords Prayer was still front and center on the wall behind his desk and the kids who drew him were still being told to repeat it. He retired in 1976 at the time he had planned (I’m done with you all once I turn 60) and was not fired as we often expected.
It’s still going on, as far as a few years ago. It seemed to become a lot more popular post-9/11.
YES!!! Sorry but we need to be NEUTRAL about religion. We do not live in an exclusively Christian nation. I would love to ask the Christians who are pushing school prayer, how they’d feel about Buddist mediatation being pushed by the teacher or Shinto prayers or prayers to the Magical Pink Unicorn or the Flying Spagetti Monster.
Yes, have some religion…BUT present it in more of a Unitarian “not favorable to any particualr religion or belief system” way.
And to complete the gentle correction, Roman Catholics do say the “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory…” lines when the prayer is said as part of Mass, but not when saying it as a private or group prayer at other times. And in spite of nine years of Catholic school and three years of CCD, I don’t rememer learning why!
Same place, same time period. Fort Worth, Texas, to be precise, and I started attending school in 1962 or 63. We had either prayer (even after the SC ruled against it) or later on a Thought for the Day, which always seemed to be a Bible verse. The public prayers ended some time in middle school, and the Thought for the Day was substituted. Apparently this was a district wide decision, and we had the TftD even in high school. I graduated from high school in the fall of 75 (two trimesters early), and that was still going on.
When my daughter graduated from high school, there was a prayer at the graduation ceremony…and this was in the 90s!
However, it should NOT be an authority figure leading the students in prayer, either directly or indirectly. And especially, it should not be part of the school day’s activities. We had precisely one Jew in grade school. Some students and even some teachers mocked him because he would not participate in the Christian prayers that the teachers led. At the time, I thought that he should just get over himself and at least pretend to go along with the group. When I reached adulthood, I realized that he was quite possibly the bravest kid in the school. He also refused the New Testament minibooks that some churches would hand out each year. Again, I am amazed at the bravery he showed, before he was even 12.
Nobody is going to stop people from praying silently in school, as long as they’re not being disruptive somehow. In fact, the Christian Bible says (Matthew 6:5-6):
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
In other words, praying in public is discouraged, and praying so that others might see you praying is counted against you.