School sentence, correct or incorrect
In the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the Constitution, titled “Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression” states the following: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise of itself; or that restricts freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people to assemble peacefully and request the Government to redress grievances”.
Now, I am not a lawyer nor am I a legal scholar, and I realize that courts have interpreted the above in many ways, however, I also realize that how the Amendment is interpreted depends on which judge sits. in the dock at the time a case is heard and just because a person is a judge doesn’t mean that person is infallible and it doesn’t mean that person doesn’t have their own agenda. After all, judges are still human.
In my opinion, having organized school prayer is not “an establishment of religion”, but the fulfillment of the will of the majority of the people of this nation. I also believe that prohibiting school prayer is “prohibiting the free exercise of it.” It is also “restricting the freedom of expression” of the majority. This nation is supposed to be a republican democracy where the will of the majority of its citizens is supposed to rule. As far as I can determine, the majority of the citizens of this country believe in prayer, of one kind or another, and only a small minority, meaning certain atheists, far-left politicians, “Hollywood celebrities,” etc., They are against. prayer.
Allowing this small minority to override the will of the majority is wrong. To allow this small, very loud, very activist and very well-financed minority to take away the right of the ‘silent’ majority to pray as they want, is to allow them to corrupt our system and take away our citizens’ freedom of religion. I realize our citizens can still pray at home and at church, yet public schools are paid for with public tax dollars, and as long as most taxpayers want school prayer, then they should have prayer at school
When a teacher leads a class in prayer, no one is obligated to pray. Some people claim that when a child does not join in the prayer, the teacher or other students may embarrass or ridicule them, so they claim that praying in class is harmful. I disagree. No good teacher would criticize a student for not praying. If a teacher does that, that teacher should be reprimanded or fired because that teacher is not worthy of being a teacher. If some ridiculous students are prayerless students, then those students have not been adequately taught about the rights of others and must be corrected. For my own reasons, I never prayed during class prayer and no one said anything to me. I was never ridiculed or criticized. I met others who didn’t pray and as far as I know they never had any problems except some of their parents embarrassed them by complaining at school. It seems that while the non-prayer students didn’t care about prayer at school, their parents did.
Most Americans find hope and comfort in prayer. Denying them the right to pray because a small minority does not approve is simply wrong. I realize that in a small number of cases some children have problems with the school prayer, but to deny the vast majority of students the hope and comfort of beginning their school day with a prayer is to trample on their rights. Denying the majority their religious freedom goes against what this country stands for.
One of the most important things about going to school is that children learn to deal with other people. All sorts of things happen at school that affect or annoy various students. They cannot and should not be protected from everything they do not like. Some children are embarrassed to go to physical education class, so should we remove physical education from the curriculum? Some kids resent certain things taught in history class, so should we remove history from the curriculum? Some kids are embarrassed because they are not good at math, so should we take math out of the curriculum? If we removed everything that could embarrass or upset a student from the curriculum, there would be no more schools. If we shielded students from everything that bothers them, they would not learn to deal with problems and would not be able to function as adults.
In my opinion, banning prayer in schools is just another case of ‘political correctness’ gone overboard.