Prayer in Public Schools - Essay Example

Prayer in Public Schools Prayer was allowed to be practiced in school across the nation in 1962 but after that it was banned completely (Marshall, 1999). Whether or not prayer should be offered by the students is something that depends on them alone and no one else has the right to dictate such elements of spiritual effect and understanding. Statute that suggests for making mandated prayer illegal does indeed protects the civil liberty of the people and it is for this matter that an individual should have complete and total freedom as to his prayers or the lack thereof within a school setting.

Prayer in schools has been debated for quite a long period of time now. This is because prayers are very close to one’s heart, and should be respected for the link that a child (or for that matter a person) has with his God. There is absolutely no one else to fill the relationship as it is a two-fold link and cannot be seen as incomplete by any stretch of imagination. Hence asking the children to pray just for fulfilling a condition is illegal and does not bring proper justice to the realms of freedom.

Even though the young ones learn about religion, it is totally up to them as to how they want to perceive their world and their God in essence. The aspect that comes to light here is that praying in schools is conducted because students are being conditioned into learning something spiritual. What the teachers and the school authorities are forgetting essentially is that it cannot be ingrained into a child if he has not been taught about such nuances from his home (Bergel, 1988). There has to be a divide here because prayer is something that is very close to one’s heart, and no alternate answers seem to exist or come about for comprehending the same principles.

Further, since the students leave the class during prayer timings, both the parents and the teachers would be opposed to this phenomenon. No teacher would like his students to leave the class at critical junctures of the lectures or sessions (Hannabuss, 2011). Hence it is always a good omen to think of these activities in light of growth and development rather than favoring or disfavoring a particular religion or society for that matter. If this is done, success would automatically be achieved within the debate of prayers in schools.

It would be a sound advice to have a neutral prayer in the morning rather than a prayer that is inclined towards a singular religion. This neutral prayer would tell the students that mankind is more important than vice and hence virtue shall remain supreme no matter how difficult the times are and what the world thinks of these scenarios that keep coming about every now and then. There must not be any partiality for any religion within the schools and hence a neutral prayer would be enough to teach the young ones that they are geared to achieve success, in the right direction.

Works Cited Bergel, Gary. Banning Prayer in Public Schools Has Led to America's Demise. May 1988 Hannabuss, Stuart. A Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion. Reference Reviews, 25(7), 2011 Marshall, William P. The School Prayer Decisions. Constitutional Commentary, 16, 1999