No Prayer Allowed in School? I Don’t Think That’s True.

by David Safier

An article in today’s Star discusses a current high school textbook filled with conservative-tinged inaccuracies. Global warming, it seems, is “enmeshed in scientific uncertainty,” and it’s a terrible thing that the Court might have the power to make a ruling about the legality of same sex marriages, rather than leaving it to the Congress and State Legislatures.

But I want to focus on what the textbook says about school prayer. Here is the passage:

“Since 1947, the (U.S. Supreme) Court has applied the wall-of-separation theory to strike down as unconstitutional every effort to have any form of prayer in public schools, even if it is nonsectarian, voluntary or limited to reading a passage of the Bible.”

In my experience as a high school teacher, that statement is grossly inaccurate. Is it considered unconstitutional to have “any form or prayer in public schools”? I don’t think so. A group of students can get together, bow their heads and pray together. A student can pray by him or herself. Students can read their Bibles individually or in groups, so long as it is done at a time when free reading is allowed. And teachers can use Bible passages in their classes for educational purposes (as I did on numerous occasions).

School-directed prayer and religion-infused Bible reading are considered infringements of students’ rights, because they mandate a certain kind of religious expression. Even if it is nonsectarian (and come on, folks, religious expression cannot be 100% nonsectarian. Get an evangelical Christian, a Catholic, a Muslim and a Jew together in a room and see if they can come up with the wording of a prayer all of them will accept), a prayer would suggest a school-mandated recognition of some kind of supernatural being, which puts agnostic and atheist students in a difficult position.

The “War on Christmas” Christians would have us believe that they are a maligned minority that has to hide in caves to be true to their faith. In fact, they want to impose their idea of Christianity on others, and they consider it an infringement of their rights when anyone objects. So, they promote the myth that prayer is banned in school.

Am I wrong? Are there rules forbidding individual students from personal religious expression? If so, please let me know.