re: Prayer in public schools

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't prayer in school only a problem if it's being led by a teacher/principal/other authority figure, or is disruptive in some way? That was the way I always understood it...

At the risk of being crude, prayers are like farts- you can do it anywhere you like, but it's pretty rude to force on people.

I don't think that kids should be forced to do it, but I definitely don't think that it should be taken away for the kids who want to. Actually, I know it shouldn't be taken away from students who want to. Now we don't need to necessarily pray in class, but there is no business in bothering students who want to pray in school.

I remember when I was in high school, there was a lot of crap going on at the school. We wanted to start our day at school off with prayer, but obviously time wasn't made for that in classes.

One of my guy friends came up with the plan that every morning, we'd carpool and get to school a half hour before classes started. Anyone who wanted to was welcome to join in. Then we'd go and stand around the flagpole, and open the morning in prayer. Anyone who wanted to pray could...We got a pretty good group going. Of course we had some people who made fun of us, but there were enough of us doing it that the teasing never became extreme. There's actually a program out there called Meet You At The Pole, as we later found out.

We didn't want to make the entire school pray, but we did want to pray for our school. And that's the way prayer in public schools should exist. Student led, student oriented, and willing participation only.

I don't have a problem with private prayer taking part in school, but I have an issue with it being a part of school. If there is a Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Whatever kid that is religious and wants to pray during school, I don't think they should be prevented from doing so if it's during a non-academic time, such as during lunch or if the school has a break period, etc. I don't think education should be disrupted for the sake of prayer though unless it is a private school of that particular religion.

Teacher/School led prayer should absolutely not happen within a public School. I attended Catholic School throughout my education where there was 6/7 teacher led prayers every single day, lent was horrendous with most of the morning taken up by continuous prayer every day of it. I attended 4 different ones in total and they all had non Catholic students. The policy was the same in every School that if you weren't Catholic you didn't have to take part and it was never an issue, no one really thought anything of it. I agree that is fine given it was a specific religion Schools but not in non religious public Schools. If people want to pray that is fine, no one is stopping them but it has no business being led by the School.

Quoting loser mom:" I went to public elementary school in the 80s, we never prayed. Unless you count, "In God We Trust" during the Pledge of Allegiance. "

Public school led prayer was made illegal by 1963. I did know it was only a matter of time before the part about "one nation under God" would be challenge. I don't know where it stands today in public schools.

Quoting ProginoskesII (SuperKink):" Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't prayer in school only a problem if it's being led by ... [snip!] ... At the risk of being crude, prayers are like farts- you can do it anywhere you like, but it's pretty rude to force on people."

You are correct. As for farting I only do it in crowded elevators and blame the person next to me. If people know I did it I just shrug my shoulders and just tell them that I am having a real smurffy day.

Music, arts, tons of valuable extracurricular activities, and life skills classes have been removed from school too. Why do people get so upset about "taking prayer out of school" (which happened 40 years ago, right?) but they don't care so much about what their kids are actually being taught?

People have weird priorities. If I wanted to, I could teach my kid to pray at home, and be prayerful whenever she wants. What I can't do is teach her how to play the flute or do calculus. I'll send her to school to learn what I can't teach her. Isn't that what it's supposed to be for?