The removal of prayer from public schools is a very controversial and misunderstood debate. This paper will address the history of the debate, common myths and misunderstandings, and the current trends. History of the Debate: Public schools originated in 1647 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and soon spread across New England. They began with an elementary school for every fifty families and a Latin school for every one hundred families. Their mission was to “ensure that Puritan children learn to read the Bible and receive basic information about their Calvinist religion.”1 By 1840, conflict was at a climax in New York City. The public schools had taken on a “common school” education that included a nondenominational course of religious instruction. This meant “students would recite a few basic prayers and read passages from the Protestant, King James Bible without commentary or interpretation.”2 This did not please the some 200,000 Roman Catholics within the city who had serious objections to Protestant “non-sectarianism”2. In 1842, New York City attempted to decentralize the issue by mandating that “no sectarian religious instruction was to be offered. All public schools would now educate students in the three R’s and leave religion to the churches.”2 This action led to the creation of church-led Sunday school’s, that were to give religious instruction. By the 1950’s, Americans began to grow concerned about the morality of their children, especially since “the common school inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible.”3 School boards across the region began to investigate ways to teach moral... ... middle of paper ... ...ovinfo.about.com “Public Schools in the United States: Some History.” ERASE, www.arc.org/erase. Redlich, Norman. “Is the Wall Crumbling?” The Nation, 9 October 2000: 26. “Religious Timelines: School Prayer.” 2002. www.atheism.about.com Riley, Richard W. Letter to American Educators. May 30, 1998. www.ed.gov/speeches/08-1995/religion. Robinson, B. A. “Religion and Prayer in U. S. Public Schools.” 2000. www.religioustolerance.org. Scott, Darrell “On target.” Handguns, October 1999: 106. United States Supreme Court. Abington School District v. Schempp. 374 U. S. 203. 1963. United States Supreme Court. Engel v. Vitale. 370 U. S. 421. 1962. “The U. S. Supreme Court on School Prayer.” Education Week, 14 December 1994. Wright, Elliot. “Religion in American Education.” Phi Delta Kappan, September 1999: 17.
Some do not believe that we have a left and right brain. However, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future by Daniel H. Pink explains that the left and right hemispheres of the brain control different abilities. I have learned from this book how society and the economy have shifted from the “Information Age” to a “Conceptual Age,” how the arguments of left brain theorists (L- directed) differ from those of right brain theorists (R-directed), the three A’s of abundance, automation, and Asia, and the six essential aptitudes or “six senses” of Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning.
I am primarily interested in how religion was taught in the early 1970s. Including: what religions were covered, how they were integrated into the text, and the values of the religion that were presented. With my interest in possibly majoring in religious studies I feel that I have an excellent understanding of how religion is taught in our high schools today, but I don’t have a thorough understanding of what it was like to grow up in school in the 1970s and go through school. How was religion presented in the textbooks of schools in the 1970s? My primary goal of this paper is to further my understanding of religion in high schools of the 1970s. Then I would like to further my study by looking at newer documents and regulations that are in place now to govern religion that is taught and expressed in our schools today. What I expect to find is that religion was taught similarly in the 70s without all the newer policies and guidelines of today. Lastly I would like to look at how these policies and regulations in our public schools are affecting our students.
Nowadays, it is widely known that the right and left hemisphere have different functions. The two hemispheres are equally important in a daily life basis. Nevertheless, in the 1960’s this was not common knowledge. Even though today the importance of the brain hemispheres is common knowledge, people don’t usually know to whom attribute this findings. One of the people who contributed to form a more defined picture about the brain hemispheres and their respective functions was Roger Wolcott Sperry, with the split brain research. Roger Sperry did more contributions than the split brain research, but this is his most important and revolutionary research in the psychological field. Thanks to the split brain research, Sperry proved that the two hemispheres of the brain are important, they work together and whatever side of the brain is more capable of doing the task is the hemisphere that takes the lead.
You have probably heard of hemispheric lateralization- hemispheric referring to the division of the brain into left and right halves, and lateralization describing the brain's tendency to make the two halves specialize in controlling different functions (1). Furthermore, the right side of your body is controlled by your left brain while the left side of your body is controlled by your right side of the brain. The connection between the hemispheres is the corpus callosum, a thick band of nerves. One of the most common beliefs is that the left hemisphere controls symbolic processing and rational thinking whereas the right hemisphere is more artistic, intuitive and creative (2). Many myths have emerged from this idea (5). We often hear students complain about being "right-brained in a left brained world" and others claiming that they do not perform well in a particular subject because they are either right-brained or left-brained. I remember being told that you should listen to lectures with your "dominant" side of my brain. In fact the idea has become so infused in today's society that we see several prevalent views of the left brain/right brain theory. A couple years back there was a car advertisement for Saab, which claimed the car as a "car for the left side of your brain." With so many simplified and popularized views of brain lateralization the task of sorting the fantasy from reality is daunting and not so easy. The big question remains standing- does hemispheric asymmetries exist and if so to what extent can we categorize functions as right or left brain, looking specifically at language?
Epilepsy is characterized by uncontrolled excessive activity of either a part of, or all of the central nervous system. A person who is predisposed to epilepsy has attacks when the basal level of excitability of the nervous system rises above a certain critical threshold. As long as the degree of excitability is held below this threshold, no attack occurs. Basically, epilepsy can be classified into three major types: grand mal, petit mal, and focal or partial epilepsy.
Not everyone who has a seizure has epilepsy. Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures. Unprovoked means that there is no immediate cause for the seizure, such as a fever, an infection of the brain, or head trauma. Nearly 10 percent of people will have a seizure during their lifetime; most of these are provoked seizures during an acute illness or condition. These people may never have epilepsy. There are two types of seizures people can have. One is partial seizure or focal they begin in one part of the brain. They cause varied symptoms auras which is a funny feeling in your stomach, staring, chewing, lip smacking, shaking, or stiffness in parts of the body. Generalized seizures are when the entire brain is effected. This causes loss consciousness. One type is grand mal is when the body stiffens and jerks. Another type is petit mal, which is momentary loss of consciousness without abnormal body movement. Some factors of this are infections of the brain this includes meningitis, encephalitis, and brain abscess. Strokes are also a risk of epilepsy. Also alcohol can cause seizures for heavy drinkers when they stop drinking abruptly (withdrawal seizures) and also have a good chance of epilepsy. Epilepsy can also cause brain tumors usually they are slow growing and don't affect them for years. Some other factors that cause epilepsy is age the risk of seizures is higher in young children. Also gender epilepsy is higher in males than in females. The most common treatment for epilepsy is the daily use of anticonvulsant or antiepilectic drugs to prevent seizures. These medications act on brain signals to limit hyperexcitability. While medications do not cure epilepsy, they allow many people to live normal, active lives. Other treatments are vagus nerve stimulation this treatment involves electronic stimulation of the brain using an implanted device like a pacemaker. Another is epilepsy surgery this is when a part of the brain that is causing the seizures is removed so that it prevents it from spreading to anther part of the brain.
"God help, I'm so lost!" If you listen carefully, this is a common thought that is heard throughout many schools in the nation. Is this thought appropriate? The following statement clearly shows that the law allows students and adults to practice religion, but at the same time be respective of others and their beliefs even if they do believe or if they don't. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, or to petition the government for a redress of grievances." (First Amendment, The Constitution of the United States). Prayer is not normally permitted as a scheduled part of classroom activities, because it would result in the violation of the principle of church-state separation, which has been defined by court interpretations of the 1st Amendment to the U.S, Constitution. The separation principle is extended to Public school as an arm of the government, with an exception which can be permitted if, during the school year, a mixture of prayers, statements, etc are delivered, using material derived from a number of different religions and secular sources. So far, this has never been tried in a school or ruled upon by a court (Religion in Public).
Lateralisation had been always a characteristic of the brain, it is present in similar ways in most species (Rogers, 2000). Brain function is defined “lateralized” because left and right hemispheres are asymmetrical and therefore specialized for different processes. To understand the advantages of lateralisation many research experiments have been carried out. For example, in the work of Rogers and colleagues (Rogers, 2000; Rogers, et al., 2004) lateralized and non-lateralized chicks were tested while searching for food and keeping an eye on predators. Lateralized chicks could distinguish food from pebbles only with right eye (left hemisphere) and could respond to attack only with left eye (right hemisphere). Results proved that lateralized chicks were faster and more precise at responding to the stimulus. Furthermore, the experiments concluded that there are two advantages to lateralization: at individual level, enhanced skill performance and faster reaction time while multitasking; at social level, being lateralized in the same direction as the majority of animals. Lastly, the hemispheres of a lateralized brain don 't operate entirely independently of one
Dierenfield, B. J. (2007, April). The Battle over School Prayer. Retrieved March 12, 2011, from www.kansaspress.ku.edu: http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/diebat.html
I am currently in the Washington Army National Guard and love the leadership skills it has given me. Over the last five years of being in the guard, I have been given many leadership opportunities; such as being the shift lead for the airfield while on deployment. We worked with many militaries from all over the world; communicating the flight plans for the day and ensuring that everything ran smoothly. While in high school, I had the amazing opportunity to be a teacher’s assistant in the lifestyles class. We worked with kids with disabilities to help them learn the skills they would need to live independently once they moved out on their own. Learning to communicate effectively was one of my harder challenges. I learned that even if a person is able to come forward and articulate exactly what they want to say, taking the time to stop and listen is of great value. You never know how important it may be. By the end of the year, the student I was working with who had autism said my name. That was one of my most rewarding moments in high school. Currently, while at Pierce College, I am in a program where I am a conversation partner. I got assigned an exchange student from Kashmir and we meet twice a week. I have been to many countries so I thought I knew a lot about different cultures. However, I have learned so much by sitting down twice a week with my conversation partner and exchanging information about the American and Kashmir lifestyles and cultures with each other. I had never heard of Kashmir; let alone all of the struggles that the country has faced. My conversation partner lives on the control line of a country that has been at war for the past decade. It reminds me to be thankful for what we have and realize that we can l...
The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for analytic, language-based, processing skills (Dean, 2013). Concerning
Epilepsy is not what you think. It is a complicated disease, a disease that doesn't just affect one type of person or age. Over fifty million men, women, and children cope with this disease daily. Epilepsy is a mysterious disease to those who are unfamiliar and uneducated about the disease. Many people have preconceived notions about Epileptics. Researching the topic thoroughly, the five preconceived notions I explored have been proven to be false.
...ng’s at my mother home, time has change, we are getting older. We are all adults, no matter how we feel, life hands you lemons, sometimes you have to make lemonade, as my glass of lemonade fills up, I’m coming to the next step in life, as family keeps striving, I understand that striving, being attentive in my studies is all I can do to better my knowledge, open my eyes to what’s really going on, not to what I think is going on.
The left and right hemispheres of the brain are each divided into sections. Within each sections are lobes, controlling such processes as our visualization, our movement, and our personalities. For instance, the occipital lobe in the back of our brain is responsible for processing vision, and the frontal lobe behind our forehead controls cognition and personality. The lobes of the brain are split between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This well-designed arrangement is for the lobes to function correctly, so the two hemispheres of the brain can communicate with one
...re of the brain is just half of the brain so why is it the only half being explored in school? This failure to confront the other hemisphere causes weakening in the right hemisphere since the right hemisphere isn?t being exercised.