I generally ignore the debates about prayer in school, but a random memory just came to me, we used to pray before lunch in school!
I don’t know if it was a specific teacher, but when we ate lunch in class, which was only for the early grades or when the cafeteria was flooded, we’d pray: “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. Amen.” As far as I know no one protested and it was just a rote thing, like the Pledge of Allegiance.
We weren’t a Christian family and I called for it a few times at the dinner table, but other than that never recited it before or since.
What’s the purpose of this post? Nothing. Just Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share!
You apparently used a shortened version. In my primary school (late 70s to early 80s) it was “God is great, God is good, let us thank him for our food. By his hands we must be fed, give us each day our daily bread. Amen.” We didn’t cotton to no hippie First Amendment back then.
Born and raised (and hope to die) in Honolulu, HI.
The interesting thing is that we had a good number of Buddhists in class. Never paid attention to whether they prayed along or not.
Romper Room was regional with local hosts, but I seem to recall that Miss Robin, our local Romper Room host used to say a prayer during the show, maybe for snack time? SIGH I was totally in love with Miss Robin when I was five, getting up early to watch her before unwillingly, sometimes literally being dragged to kindergarten.
I don’t do it only out of pride, but because things are so often (at least in my life experiences and perceptions) different here.
Edit: I don’t know if it’s a thing for this generation, but my Mom would always proudly say she’s a Lahaina (Maui) Girl and less so (in frequency, but not pride) my Dad would say he’s from Kapaa (Kauai).
Heck, you can even pray openly in (public) school, as long as you’re doing it in an appropriate way (e.g., in a group of voluntary participants at recess, not jumping up in the middle of a math test to try to lead the class in prayer), and the school itself is not officially promoting or organizing it.
Which means that our teacher-led cafeteria grace rhymes of a half-century ago were way out of line, First Amendment-wise. But there would have been nothing wrong with, and still wouldn’t be anything wrong with, individual students choosing to say grace in a like-minded group before lunch in the cafeteria.
I was born under a communist regime and raised by an atheist family. Many people came out as strong Christian believers when the communist regime collapsed and I dealt with this by intensifying my reading about both religion and atheism, for a while.
It amuses me to watch some people on this board try to teach me what atheism is all about.
My junior high algebra teacher began class with a daily scripture. Similar to these calendars.
365 Bible Verses-A-Year Page-A-Day Calendar 2020 Amazon.com
She wasn’t supposed to do it, but was very near retirement. Didn’t matter if the school got upset.
I enjoyed the scripture. It set a nice tone for the class. There was no discussion about the meaning. We could interpret it however we wanted.
And in 50 years, no one noticed that “good” doesn’t rhyme with “food”? Come on folks, how do you expect God to take your prayers seriously if they don’t rhyme?
60 and 70 years ago, PA state law required the reading of ten verses from the bible every day of school. The teachers did mostly stick to the old testament.
