Every person has the human right to engage in worship during public forums. Thus every person has the right to pray in school. When prayer was still allowed in school crime was at a low rate. Basically there was less crime everywhere. We consider the good ole' days when basic morals were taught at home. When the difference between right and wrong was enforced. When family and religion was considered the most valuable and precious things to have. Now look at the mess we have created. Children look up to their parents, and when parents don't enforce values at home, they seek to learn elsewhere. We now live in a world where parents are too busy with their jobs to be concerned with their main priority; children. Some children even skip trying to learn and cry out to gain attention. Every school deals with problem children breaking the code of conduct in some shape, fashion, or form. Take a good look at sixty years ago, prayer was allowed in schools and religion was strongly implied. We had less prisons full of human psychopaths and hardly any serial crimes like in today's society. Life was good and fair. Everyone treated each other with kindness and respect. Respect was a huge issue and so was the importance of believing in God. In modern days people turn to courts for every simple issue. There is no way they can act like decent, civil human beings and talk about a certain situation to solve a problem. Used to, if there was a problem it was settled by civil communication.
Life without prayer in school has led to total and complete chaos. People run around stabbing and stealing from each other like it's no big deal. There are not enough decent people in the world. Seriously think, how many people can you actually trust and conf...
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...rive them of their chance to learn and pray in public forums? No matter your race, or religion America is the land of opportunity and religion should be emphasized more.
Works Cited
Corbett, Cale. "Abington Township School District v. Schempp." The Day God Was Kicked Out of School. 26Jun1995. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, Web. 5 Feb 2010. .
"Madalyn Murray O'Hair." About.com. Atheism. 2009. Web. .
"Separation of Chirch and State." Religious Tolerance (1995): 5. Web. 3 Feb 2010. .
"Separation of Church and State." Separation: Good for Government,. 1995. Anti-Defamation League, Web. 1 Feb 2010. .
The intercom comes on in a classroom first thing in morning and says “now kids, it is time for our prayer”. Every kid in the class joins hands and starts to respectfully pray. Once the prayer is finished, they all go back to work and are more unified together, right? That is usually not the case. More likely than not, only several kids in the class joins the prayer. Most kids then laugh at the others praying, breaking the bonds between the two. With religion being brought up in school, there are more possibilities for debate between children ending in violence. Three fourths of kids at my high school will not even recite the pledge of allegiance just because it says god in it. Public schools should not have any impact on religion. Christian Groups are sneaking religion into high schools.
"Prayer has been banished from schools and the ACLU rampages to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Moreover, “Separation of Church and State” is nowhere found in the Constitution or any other founding legislation. Our forefathers would never countenance the restrictions on religion exacted today." -- Bill Flax, Forbes, 2011
Church-state relations in America has been widely discussed and hotly debated. One school of thought holds that the church should be absolutely separated from the state, while another holds that the church plays a moral role in state building and its sanctity, without which the state risks falling apart. In my discussion of the church-state relations, I state that the history of church-state relations has a Constitutional basis. Next, I discuss the two schools of thought in context and how they have shaped contemporary American political thought. Finally, I argue that the two schools of thought have a common ground. This is followed by a summary of my key arguments and a conclusion to my essay.
On January 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut in which he stated:
* Longley, Robert. "Public Schools Don't Have a Prayer." U.S. Gov Info/Resources n.d. 15 Nov. 2001 .
Religion can be defined as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe that often contains a moral code that governs the conduct of human affairs according to dictionary.com. Some countries use their religion to form some sort of government or use religion as a way to decide the laws within their land. People often believe that religion should be kept out of government while others think it may create a more effective one.
How many times have you heard the term "separation of church and state"? Some people believe these five words have not been emphasized enough and other people think the government has taken them too far. How could you take that direct quote made by the founding fathers of the United States of America too far? You couldn’t. Unquestionably, Christian beliefs, or any religious beliefs, should not play a role in United States government.
...ople of color, women, and others fight for individual rights. If told they could not talk of their beliefs in public, this country would probably face another civil war. But for some reason, those who wish to practice their religion publicly are treated as criminals. In one instance a child who brought her Bible to school to read during free reading time, was sent home and told not to bring the Bible to school again. Silent messages are sent to children when disapproval seems the norm. Future generations accept this infringement on personal rights, and so goes the country and moral responsibility to each other.
No other independent enlightenment in the world allows individual independence to the United States of America. American courts, especially the Supreme Court, have improved a set of lawful policies that comprehensively shelter all types of the power of appearance. When it comes to appraising the level to which people take benefit of the occasion to convey believes, many members of culture can be accountable for misusing the boundary of the First Amendment through openly offending others through racism or obscenity (Karen O’Connor & Larry J. Sabato 2006). America is what it is because of the Bill of rights and the Constitution of the United States of America. The ratification of the Constitution warranted that religious dissimilarity would continue to develop in the United States. American has enhanced a different nature toward the power of word throughout history.
Those in favor of prayer in school pose several arguments. They say it will increase tolerance in schools, as children learn of different religions and how they practice. Many feel it will bring to surface the personal questions kids have about god and religion and allow them to search for their own belief system. The most common however is the argument that bringing prayer back to schools will help reverse the moral degragation of this country. As the Reverend Jeffery L. Osgood, pastor of the First southern Baptist Church in Dover wrote, "Back in 1962, when prayer was removed by the Supreme Court, something happened to America's soul and America's schools. Our nation became increasingly secular and less tolerant of moral standards and values. Since America became to proud to pray to the God of Heaven who created us, we have been reaping the rewards. Crime is way up. The family has broken up. The test scores of students have taken a submarine dive. Its time for a change!"
It is argued that there isn’t a way for every religion to be recognized within the public schools to accommodate everyone without offending anyone. It just isn’t a possibility to incorporate a sense of a “prayer service” that meets everyone’s needs without completely throwing off the school day’s curriculum and without making a form of an offense.
"I do not believe that any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States." -Thomas Edison. Religion and prayer in public schools is a big controversy for schools in the United States. School officials cannot take sides on religion since it will violate the first amendment which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Establishing a specific religion in public school violates the first amendment, therefore public schools have to remain neutral when it comes to the matter of religion. Some people believe that teaching about religion should not be allowed considering it violates the separation of church and state, but that is not true. There are many issues regarding religion in public schools, however exercising your personal religion independently is not one of them. (Leitch, 1)
Religion in school can be defined as the practice of any personal religious belief or act in a place of education. To say that religion is a big topic of interest to a lot of people in the United States today is a bit of an understatement. The debate over the separation of church and state has been going on without end for years. With many different perspectives on the matter and even more opinions on how it should be handled. Since the beginning many people have challenged the role that religion has played in education. Should schools teach religion? If so, can they do it evenhandedly? Will they misinterpret the religion wrong? How many people would be offended? Would we be better off without it so that it doesn’t cause controversy? The problem is can we truly answer any of these arguments without the opposite side disagreeing? Many of these questions are rooted from the same controversy that is happening in schools today. Aside from the separation of church and states comes one of the vastly debatable topics of education allowing religion which is prayer in school. While a few believe that prayer in school is constructive to the development of a child and their faith, others may conclude that it could completely denounce the faith of a child. Because this is an ongoing controversy further research on whether religion should or should not be allowed in public education is usually boils down to two major points the First Amendment and is religion good for our children? Could we potentially have a compromise or could the two opposing sides meet somewhere in the middle?
The issue of prayer in school cannot be dealt with in a manner that will please everyone. The main thing that needs to be stressed is that tolerance of other people and their beliefs is the only true way to ensure that everyone has freedom and equality in America. Until that day comes there will always be groups of people who cause disruption in our schools and take away from what the focus really should be: quality education and an understanding of others as well.
School prayer is a very controversial issue in today’s society. This issue has been a problem since America was first founded, in that the country was founded on religious beliefs. The Pilgrims wanted to be able to express their beliefs freely, but in England this freedom was not found, so they decided to come to the Americas, where their beliefs could be expressed freely. As time passed they realized that having this kind of freedom caused problems between different belief systems. Many people started questioning the founding of their nation and what the foundation was made of. This questioning is still going on today and people are torn between letting prayer in to the public school system or keeping it out.