Prayer in School

School prayer is a controversial subject which gets people’s blood boiling on both sides.  Some religious leaders believe that their rights are being violated by not at least having a designated “silent” time which all students, regardless of religion, must observe at the beginning of each day.  They lament over the fact that it is illegal for children to pray in school while atheism is championed in the school system.  They claim that by not teaching their religion in the schools we are actively promoting an atheist agenda.  Some even go so far as to say that the children are being indoctrinated into atheism.  It was, after all, those godless atheists that got prayer removed from schools, right?  If you know a damned thing about the school system then you know full well how full of shit they are.

First, it is JUST AS ILLEGAL to promote atheism in the school system as it is to promote a religion.  The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly made it clear that atheism is afforded the same rights as religion under the First Amendment (note that people often mistake the Supreme Court rulings as saying atheism actually is a religion, which is not the case).  Any halfway intelligent person could easily argue against the best lawyers that this also means it has the same legal restrictions, though it has never come up in court to my knowledge because atheists tend to have more respect for their fellow man and thus have never tried to push their religious beliefs into the school system and onto children against the wills of their parents.

I understand the thought process which leads to this conclusion, but really, you’d have to be a moron to believe it valid.  The idea is that since atheism is the lack of religion having no religious teachings in school is teaching atheism.  It’s astounding the mental acrobatics many Christians go through to keep irrational and moronic beliefs.  Think about it.  They are insisting that we are actively teaching atheism in the schools, which is a violation of their rights and completely unfair to them.  And what is the only way to fix this unfair discrimination?  The solution is that we actively teach Christian values in our schools, which will not in any way discriminate against or be unfair to anyone…somehow.  The utter absurdity is mind boggling.  They’ve invented this black and white world view where the only two possibilities are they are getting their way and everything is fine for everyone or they are being discriminated against; “with us” or “against us”.  Compromise is impossible with this mind set because there are only two possible choices.  If you don’t teach X then you are teaching Y, EVEN IF you talk about neither X nor Y.  Unfortunately for the retards who see the world this way, most Supreme Court justices tend to be a little too intelligent to be fooled by their pathetically ignorant false dichotomy.  The idea that if you don’t teach one thing you are, by default, teaching another is beyond ludicrous.  It’s like they are claiming that atheism is the default position one takes, an idea most of them would argue against for eternity if you claimed that babies were born atheist.

Next, by no stretch of the imagination is it illegal for students to pray in school.  It is only illegal for the staff at the school to be involved or for students to make a public display of it, just as it is illegal for the staff at the school to be involved with a student atheist group or for students to publicly proclaim that anyone who believes a giant fairy in space made everything is stupid.  Students are not arrested or expelled for praying in school.  They can organize prayer groups in schools.  School officials may make them take it to a private area rather than allow them to make a public display of it, but prayer in schools is not illegal and never has been.

Some religious leaders actually believe that they are compromising when they suggest a moment of silence at the beginning of the school day.  They believe that forcing children who do not or do not wish to pray to sit quietly while others do is somehow being fair to everyone.  To hear them talk you would believe that the school is the only place in the world their kids can pray and then only if it’s silent as a tomb and during normal school hours.  Their kids can’t go to school 5 minutes early and find a quiet spot where they won’t bother other students who don’t wish to pray.  Instead they have to wait until every student is there and force the entire school to sit quietly.  Only under these circumstances will God hear the prayers of their children.  God can’t be everywhere, right?  He can’t hear them in their homes, he can’t hear them on the bus and he certainly can’t hear them in a quiet room if kids on the other side of the school building aren’t sitting quietly while they pray.  The “compromise” is that students don’t have to pray if they don’t want to.  They often try to pass it off as something else entirely.  They call it “secular” and say the students can use the time for whatever they want.  They claim that it will allow students to “prepare themselves” for the upcoming school day.  Unfortunately this lame excuse has passed legal muster in some places.  It’s quite obvious these are excuses to set aside time specifically for Christian school prayer.  In fact, in Chicago when a “moment of silence” bill came up for a vote several legislators began singing, "hello school prayer, our old friend" to Simon and Garfunkel's, "The Sounds of Silence."  As blatantly obvious as it was that this was NOT secular and was, in fact, a thinly veiled school prayer bill, the court still upheld it…for now.

The reality is that it is just passive indoctrination.  As an atheist I teach my children that talking to imagined deities is silly and only silly people would do such a thing.  It is my right as a parent to instill in my children the reality that talking to one’s self and pretending some spirit being is listening is the definition of idiocy.  Having a moment of silence in school where my children are force not only to observe, but to participate in this idiotic superstitious ritual, even by sitting quietly to allow it to take place uninterrupted, would teach my children that this nonsense is normal.  It would indoctrinate them into the belief that this is normal behavior for rational people, which is the purpose of the moment of silence.  If they can’t force my children to learn about their god they at least want to force my children to observer their superstitious rituals to soften their minds so that ideas of magic and space fairies can be more easily inserted at any given opportunity.  Of course there are also the Christian parents who fear that if they don’t specifically create a time for their children when they are forced to sit quietly with nothing else to do, they won’t pray at all.  They are well aware that if you don’t regularly cement the stupid in their kids’ heads with prayer, church services and various fantastic claims of magic and zombies it may come loose and fall out.

Finally we come to my favorite part, how prayer got removed from schools.  You get to find out just how we evil atheists managed to do it!  The case which did it was Engel v. Vitale.  The atheist in this case was…um…wait…there wasn’t one!  The petitioner in the case was a group of Jewish organizations.  Not a single atheist was represented.  People often confuse this with Abington School District v. Schempp, which got Bible reading removed from schools.  In that case an atheist, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, was one of the petitioners.  The case’s namesake, however, was Edward Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist, not an atheist.  Two separate cases were combined and only a single atheist was represented.  The outcome would have been the same if there were no atheists involved.  Or you could look at the 2,000 case which held that student lead prayer over the public address system was a violation of the establishment clause.  That case is Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe.  That case was brought by two students, one Mormon, one Catholic.  No atheists there either.  So it would seem Jews, Mormons and Catholics got prayer removed from the schools.  A SINGLE atheist played a small part in getting Bible reading removed, but religious views were represented even in that.

Going back a little further to 1948, however, we can see the very beginnings of the death of religion in our schools.  The case was McCollum v. Board of Education.  The case had nothing to do with Bible reading or school prayer, but actual “voluntary” religious classes during the school day.  After reluctantly allowing her child to attend the classes for a year, mother Vashti McCollum removed her child from the classes the next year.  Her then 9 year old son, James, was the only student not to attend the classes, having to sit quietly in the hallway while they were given.  This singled him out as being “different” from the other students, making him the subject of ridicule.  James McCollum was then pressured by teachers and his parents by school officials to permit him to attend the classes to help him “get along”.  A liberties violation doesn’t get any more blatant than that.  A 9 year old kid was singled out, ostracized from his class, forced to sit quietly alone in the hallway, teased by the other kids and pressured by teachers to conform.  Finally his parents were pressured to get him to conform under the veiled threat that he would continue to suffer if he did not.

Non-Christians and Christians alike have had to fight every step of the way to separate Christianity from the public school system, and there is good reason for us both to want the two separated.  The fight has been going on for more than 60 years and it will likely continue for at least a few more decades, but we will win in the end.  In fact, we’re making great strides today.  My 14 year old son has a friend in middle school who came from a Catholic grade school, but still finds it difficult to believe there’s a magic ghost watching us poop to make sure we don’t touch ourselves.  Atheism is on the rise and Christianity is falling, losing more power with each passing decade.  Atheism now has its own “rock stars” with the likes of Richard Dawkins, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Hawking.  The battle rages on, but the war is all but over already.