Banning Prayer In Schools Essay

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Banning Prayer in Schools

When schools first opened hundreds of years ago prayer was always enforced, and the Bible was the only book most schools had to read. Our first constitutional right states that we have the right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion, and as our right the government can not tell us when it is appropriate to pray. The government is only taking away yet another right making us weaker and themselves stronger. The bible being the first book in education, the first amendment, moment of silence in school, the religious freedom amendment, and how society have reacted to this situation help to reach my opinion on prayer in schools.

The oldest known system of education was to teach religion and promote traditions of people. In the western world education was based on Biblical traditions of the Old Testament. The first school in America was in Jamestown in 1607. Schools were church related or private, including universities. Yale, Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth were all established by church groups. In the early 1800's four of every 1000 people were illiterate. Greek and Latin were taught in grammar school. Protestantism permeated the textbooks, which caused the Catholics to create their own schools. In the early 1800's, Horace Mann, as president of the senate in Massachusetts, initiated the first state board of public instruction. He wanted public education to be Unitarian and did not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. He wanted state education with no Christian influence. Mann followed Germany's Hegelian philosophy, which claimed nothing was absolute and man's ideas were superior to Biblical principles. This was the important shift from objective realities to subjective realities. (Mel Gablers) In the early 20th century, John Dewey, a university professor trained teachers in "progressive education". Teachers today are instructed in this philosophy. Mr. Dewey was a signer of the Humanist Manifest #1, and believed that Christianity was the principle problem of society, a problem to be solved through public education. He rejected belief in God, embraced evolution, and thought behavioral psychology was the way to control human behavior. To create social individuals, Mr. Dewey advocated gradual change in the schools to down grade academics and build curriculum around occupational activities, which would provide the maximum opportunity for socialization. He admitted that high literacy produced individuals who can stand on their own two feet and think discerningly, something that would obstruct the creation of a socialist utopia. (Blumenfeld Blumenfeld Education Letter January 1992). In 1932 the National Education Association (NEA) stated that schools must do what the home and community had done in the past. In the 1960's a new psychology, the "Third Wave" or "self-actualization" was developed by Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and William Coulson. The idea that people needed to get in touch with and verbalize their deepest feelings and thoughts was introduced into schools. Feelings were taught instead of truth, subjective realities. Dr. Coulson now maintains that it is disastrous and that children need to be taught the basics and objective realities. "We have got to stuff our kids heads with truth and then we will give them something to think with." This translates into a plea for lower level skill mastery before higher level thinking skills are introduced, the opposite of today's educational restructuring philosophy in Kansas and elsewhere. Quality Performance Accreditation redefines the mission of schools to formally implement affective and psychological goals as part of the education process. Rather than parents being the primary authority for the child's socialization, values, attitudes and behavior, the school usurps that job. (Blumenfeld).

The first amendment states that congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. (Giesler 1). The constitution grants the free exercise of religion to every American, and that right should not vanish at the doors of a public school. Although the constitution does not overtly mention God, it does imply dependence upon a Creator through its last words, called the Subscription Clause. (Religious Freedom Act). After the Constitution was written, the first ten amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were added to ensure the maintenance of certain liberties not expressly stated in the Constitution. James Madison wrote the first amendment "religion clause," and an earlier draft made his intentions clear: The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established… When the Anti-federalist saw the word "national" in Madison's earlier draft, they argued that his use of that word presupposed a powerful centralized government. That was not Madison's intention, so his wording was changed to the present construction. Yet understanding intended to alleviate the fear that a national church, such as the Anglican Church in Great Britain, would rise to official preeminence. (Historical Context of...

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