Polls on Free Republic are considered junk so I don’t know what to say about this poll. I was able to say prayers everyday at school....in fact the entire class did. It is called Catholic School....I went for 13 years and never was told not to pray. People have the option to send their children to Catholic School or Private School. It is called choices. I am sorry that the latest TV might be out of the question because of tuition but you sacrifice for your family and principles.
Be careful what you wish for. Do you have any idea how many schools in this country would be insisting on offering islamic, hindi and other pagan prayers?
At best the Christians would get a sprinkle of prayer in the morning and the rest of the day the government would establish the government religion of godless secularism. Oh wow! Why am I **not** impressed. ( sigh)
At the very best the government schools would be offering up a generic and lukewarm minute or two of prayer. We know what Christ does with the lukewarm. He spits them out of His mouth!
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing all K-12 education. Work to get our children into private conservative schools that thoroughly and completely integrate Judeo Christian belief and our nation's founding principles into every minute of the child's school day.
The democrats will NEVER allow prayer in the Government schools.
If people learn to depend on God the politicians lose power.
Government wants everyone dependent on them.
That’s fine, I’m not opposed to students gathering privately in public schools to pray during their free time. What I am against is schools forcing students to sit through prayers. Churches and private gatherings are for prayers. Public schools should not be places of government-organized worship.
too bad, becaus the getting porn and condoms
I never needed any government ruling telling me whether or not I could pray in school.
Like any other kid, come finals time, I quietly prayed that I would pass the damn exam.
- The words "separation of church and state" do not appear in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
- The 1st Amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." {emphasis added}
- It wasn't until the early 1960's that prayer in public school was "outlawed" by a new interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.
- The history of the U.S. includes prayer and Bible readings in all sorts of public places, including schools and Congress.
- In 1782, the United States Congress passed the following resolution: "The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."
William Holmes McGuffey, the author of the McGuffey Reader (used ofr over 100 years in U.S. public schools), declared: "The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions. From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology."
- Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636.
- In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures: "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, (John 17:3); and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2:3)."
{Excerpts from AllAboutPopularIssues.org}
What a horrible mangling of the actual argument.
I prayed every day of public school, at the flagpole.
The Constitutional issue is if there should be Teacher led, school endorsed and/or mandated sectarian prayer in school.
Muslims like the idea of prayer in School as well.
I went through the Canal Zone government school system. Mondays through Fridays we faced the flag, which was in every classroom, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang a patriotic song. The song depended on the grade level. For example, what six graders sang was more complicated than what first graders sang.
Sundays were for Sunday school or whatever one chose to do outside the school system concerning religion. Period.
To this day, I have never, ever understood and do not accept forcing prayers into the public school system by overzealous religious people who want to impose their beliefs on everybody else.
That is what Sunday school is for. Public schools are public and not private institutions and not some arm of a religious group.
How would these same religious groups like to be forced to pray Muslim prayers in public schools?
I oppose prayer in government schools.
The government schools shouldn’t exist in the first place.
I don’t support prayer in government-controlled schools. The heart of secular government schools is opposed to Christian faith, so the “artifacts” (e.g., prayer) that arise out of such an ungodly educational philosophy will be opposed to the Christian faith.
Maybe our tax dollars can be directed (by parents) to the educational option *they* choose for their children. Maybe magnet schools and charter schools and private schools and home schools could offer a different fundamental philosophy — one more amenable to a Christian worldview. In *that* case, I suppose “prayer in school” would be acceptable.