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Pundits and editorial writers pounced on Newt Gingrich when he suggested, soon after the election, that Republicans in the House would take up a school prayer amendment after acting on the agenda outlined in the Contract With America. Most insisted the proposal was a major political blunder. But then most of them had previously decried the contract itself as a major political blunder, sure to lose votes for Republican candidates. The school prayer amendment is an excellent idea, but ambitious version of the proposal, one that tries to remove most or all current restrictions on state legislatures and local school boards, might not secure adoption by the required three-quarters of the states.
Even seemingly popular general proposals can founder on emotional objections to particular details, as the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment ought to remind us. Almost any version of a prayer amendment will trigger an extensive debate, and such a debate will be helpful for Republicans and healthy for the nation. The prayer amendment is something that is well overdue. In order to prosper into the next century we, as Americans, need to go back to the fundamentals of our moral beliefs. The placement of a time where students are allowed to perform a voluntary silent prayer can help us reinstate ethics and pure ideals back into our children. Without prayer in school the American education system will continues downward spiral into a black hole of corruption agreed.
Public opinion polls over the last thirty years have continually shown that roughly three-quarters of the electorate already supports prayer in the schools (Dyckman). President Clinton seemed to acknowledge this when he expressed openness to a prayer amendment soon afterGingrichs statement (Van Beta). But the Democratic Party deeply committed, both financially and culturally, to constituents demanding perpetual allegiance to their own version of civil liberties. The White House staff demonstrated as much when it hastily disclaimed the presidents statement on this issue. It is not a bad thing for the majority party to align itself with the overwhelming majority of voters, and to leave Democrats to do the bidding of their fearful, angry little pressure groups (Garvey).
However, without both parties agreeing to push for this, iwill be more than difficult to see it through. Prayer in school needs to be an issue that becomes less about parties and more about the views of the each Congressperson? s constituents. The importance of the school prayer issue goes beyond both prayer and the schools, for there is no direct mentioned the Constitution of either. Ever since its 1962 ruling against prayer and Bible-reading in public schools, the Supreme Court has used the supposed menace of religion in public schools as a doctrinal and political launching pastor broader attacks on religious references or accommodations to religion in public life (Kaminer).
The Court is wrong in this aspect, and its decisions over theist thirty-five years have been misleading and troublesome. The court progressed from banning prayers in schools to banning the display of the Ten Commandments in public school hallways (Blummer). It held that state aid to parochial schools violates the Constitution. It ruled that the display a Christmas tree in a public building was also a constitutional violation.
Some justices have even argued that laws restricting access to abortion manifest an improper establishment of religion by imposing a religious opinion on legislative policy reasoning. In other words, that the Constitution requires religious opinion not only tobe hidden, but also to be disenfranchised (Garvey). Unfortunately these are some of the mild decisions made bout federal court system. It is understandable to see white Ten Commandments should not be posted in a public school why parochial schools should not receive federal funding. Nonetheless, the court has not dared to carry this logic through to its full conclusion. The court unaccountably ruled in the mid- 1980 s that prayers at the opening of state legislative sessions were constitutionally permissible, even when delivered by sectarian chaplains remunerated with taxpayer funds.
Even liberal justices have acknowledged that the national motto, In God We Trust, may remain on American money, and that the reference to one nation under God may remain in the Pledge of Allegiance. Justice Brennan, in a widely cited opinion, argued that such concessions to tradition were constitutionally acceptable because they were merely ceremonial and solemnizing gestures no longer conveying a serious religious connotation. So who draws the line between ritual and religious? The Court has been most insistent, however, about suppressing concessions to religion in public schools. In 1985 it ruled that even a state-mandated moment of silence the beginning of the school day was an affront to the Constitution, because some students might take it as encouragement to use that moment for silent prayer (Garvey).
This was a severe blow to the school prayer side because it disallowed the most important part of our fight, a standard time set aside to pray. The Court continued and in a series of decisions between them and the lower courts almost all religious freedom was stripped in schools. In 1992, the Court held that a brief convocation statement at a highschool graduation ceremony was unconstitutional because it mentioned the word God. (Gorov) Just the mentioning of theory has sent parents screaming to their administration. Have we really become so paranoid that just the mention ofthe word? God? makes us think our children are being brainwashed?
Unfortunately, lower courts have enforced the spirit of such rulings with a vengeance. Even student-initiated prayer and Bible-study sessions outside regular classrooms (given only for those who desire them) have been disallowed by lower court judges, who ruled that such activities suggest impermissible endorsement of prayer by public authorities if held on school grounds (Gorov). One lower court even held that a public school was acting in accord with the Constitution in preventing a teacher from displaying a copy of the Bible on his desk and including about of Bible stories among the books made available foresee-time reading by students in his class (Gorov). In abuse now on appeal to the Supreme Court, lower courts have held that the University of Virginia acted properly indenting financial subsidies to a student Christian magazine, while allowing subsidies to a range of other student publications (including publications by Jewish and Islamic student groups): aid to a Christian publication might appear be government endorsement of religion, and thus invitation of the First Amendment (Blummer). The most common rationale for such religio-phobic rulings is unconvincing but nonetheless revealing. Children and adolescents, it is said, are particularly vulnerable to psychological coercion and the sting of exclusion; so thecourt's must be vigilant against religion in school settings.
There is certainly some awkwardness in asking non-Christianity participate in, or remove themselves from, explicitly Christian devotion, which public schools have sometimes sponsored explicitly. But from the time of President Washington onward, public figures, public proclamations, and public rituals have invoked divine authority while steering clear of sectarian references. The New York state prayers truck down by the Supreme Court was itself entirely non-sectarian. Where there are any sizable numbers often-Christians among the students, it seems unlikely in the future that school officials will insist on religious formulas that are bound to offend many people. The truth, however, is that while schools may usually try to avoid giving offense, no one seriously pretends that schools have a constitutional duty, or even a practical hope, of making every student feel equally comfortable all times. Many public schools put a great deal of emphasis competitive sports.
Students with physical handicaps mayor be able to participate in these sporting contests, but one argues that schools must therefore abolish their sports programs. Many schools sponsor patriotic rituals centered around flag-raising ceremonies or the singing of patriotic songs. Students who are citizens of other countries, or who have been raised to think that America int a land of liberty and justice for all, may find such ceremonies alien or repellent. Few would then maintain that these ceremonies be abolished. The Supreme Court itself, ina celebrated 1943 case, ruled that school children could not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance if it violated their conscience to do so; but the court did not conclude that because some children have conscientious objections tothe flag salute, schools must discontinue the practice forall children. Only those who object to religious displays are given veto rights under current constitutional law.
The point is worth stressing. Lots of things go on in public schools these days that offend ordinary American parents. The New York City Board of Education provoked a ruckus when it proposed to teach tolerance of gays betting elementary school students to read works like Heather Has Two Mommies (which contains a rather graphic description of how one of those mommies conceived Heather by artificial insemination) (Lewis). But parents who object this sort of thing are confined to political channels of protest; no court doctrine establishes a general right to protest offensive material in public schools. Similarly, white parents in Prince Georges County, Maryland protested the excesses of the public school systems Afrocentric Curriculum, in which some texts degenerate into anti-white racism. They could not get a day in court for such objections.
The federal courts have not been content with throne-sided vigilance against affronts arising from actual religious expression. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Pico v. School Board that schools could not even voluntarily accommodate objections from religious parents to school practices that offended them. In this case, the court held that removing offensive books from school libraries was an impermissible form of censorship (Dyckman). In a 1968 case, the court held that schools could not omit the teaching of evolution theory, since this would endorse the religious objections of Bible-believers to evolution theory. When alchohol board this past October withdrew books on voodoo and witchcraft from school libraries in response to parental complaints, including books explaining how to cast love spells or killing spells, a federal court ruled this action unconstitutional.
A lower court even ruled that on eschool district had violated the Constitution by banning school dances, since the court found grounds to suspect thatthe objection to dances was religious. So as you can seethe court has been trying to stop unconstitutional behavior that has been implemented by severe right wing conservatives. The Court has tried to be far, and in many cases it has, but without full Congressional support the Judicial system can not see the errors of its ways. After all, then, the issue is not really one of assuring accommodation of differing viewpoints and trying to limit wounded feeling. The issue is essentially one of assuring that public schools remain in the hands of the appropriate people. The question is not protected minorities, in most communities, for example, conservative Christians who object to books on witchcraft in school libraries are probably minorities themselves.
The issue is assuring that certain privileged minorities get their way, and that others, even when they are the majority, are denied any control of school practices. It may not always be possible to satisfy everyone. If alchohol prayer amendment removes the federal judiciary fruits current role as umpire of cultural etiquette in this area, some families are sure to find the consequences disturbing to their sensibilities. If the most insistently liberal or secularist students find their schools to be intolerably religious or conservative or whatever, they are free to attend private schools more to their liking; which is exactly the advice given to students who sought some acknowledgment of religion in their schools over the past thirty years.
Indeed, many and perhaps most conservatives would support some form of government aid to these private liberal havens, as long as the courts would also allow audio private schools operated under religious auspices. Due to all the debating that goes on between all thesis of this argument the main objective at hand may best. Parents, Congressman, and school board administrators may be so concerned about winning votes for their side thatcher lose track of the most important issue of all, the education of our nation? s children.
With or without prayer in school children will these institutions in order to learning to seek direction in life. Even if a voluntary silent prayer was permitted in our public schools, shouldn? t the students (and parents for that matter) be more focused onthe learning experience rather than the religious one? Ifthe people who run our nation today overlook the true life lessons our children must learn then we are headed for certain disaster. If we don?
t take care of our children now, who will be there to take care of us in the autumn our years? Even if not finally adopted, a prayer amendment would send a strong signal to the Supreme Court to leave difficult issues such as accommodation of religion to the good sense accountable officials at the state and local levels. Whatever those officials might do, they are unlikely to offend more people than the federal courts have done. It is time for us to see each other as Americans, not atom full of individuals. If we never fight together they none of us will ever win.
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