Should Prayer be put back in public schools

no one should ever be forced to pray. when I was five years old I was SMACKED by a teacher for not bowing my head when everyone else was praying. I'm not a Christian, I think it's hypocritical to pray to someone elses God, even if you're just mouthing the words, and I resent that teacher to this day, because they had no right to use violence against me for not bowing to THEIR God. not mine. no one is stopping those who want to pray from praying. to stop unruly behaviour you have to teach children to respect other people, respect property and lives. to stop those poor kids killing each other, something has to be done to stop the popular crowd bullying anyone who is not like them, and then maybe they won't be driven to such desparate actions.

If you are referring to Public schools, they have a diversity of students in attendance. If you want to put prayers back in the schools, how would you satisfy all the different religions of the children that attend. Would you have to have special classes for prayer, with teachers qualified to lead each and every different religion? This would be very difficult to do, as the schools do not have the funding to add teachers just to lead prayer services. I understand where you are coming from, but it isn't up to the school system to teach religious beliefs to students, unless they are attending a private, religious school. Then it is in their curriculum. It is up to the parents and families to instill proper behaviorial attitudes in their children.

I think prayer should be put back in schools.For those that believe in God and I am a strong believer!!Those who believe shoud have the right to pray and i believe without God bad things tend to happen.There is one God and that is my heavanly Father upstairs!!

Mandated? No way. Prayer should be allowed anywhere that a person wants to pray, voluntary, and of course, anyone can pray where ever they want, silently. But mandating it? Forcing others to pray? No way.

NO! Its not fair of one religion to say that they are right and that everyone should and has to do what their religion says. And pray like they do. Thats just wrong. Thankfully living in a place that is considered free, we have the choice of what religion we want to believe in or not to believe in. Forcing children to pray to a religion that is not theirs will cause harm and damage to the child. I would pull my child from a school that demanded prayer. It should be kept in churches and religious schools. NOT the general FREE public education.

Religion is something that belongs at home. Forcing students to pray opens up a huge can of worms -- which religion would you have your public schools force its students to adhere to? Catholicism? Islam? Buddhism? What about the students who aren't members of those faiths? Screw 'em? Or let everybody in the class pray to whichever god(s) they want to worship? How do you handle the conflict inherent in *that* solution? To better answer your question, no, prayer should not be put back in public schools. If you take a child who's planning to beat some other kid senseless after school and make him "pray" for five minutes a day, you're not going to change anything. What you're proposing is called "indoctrination." Introducing rote memorization, repetition, and ritual do nothing to change what a person thinks or feels on the inside. You will not change a child's behavior by forcing him to pray. You will simply build resentment within that child for a religion that has nothing to offer him except mindless rituals, ancient "boring" texts, and traditions that mean nothing to him. I'm not trying to invalidate your religion here, by the way -- I'm just saying forcing it on a student without any proper context will do nothing but waste time. Religion belongs in churches and belongs at home. If the only "religious education" you (and your church) offers your child is "if you don't follow these rules exactly and precisely, you will BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY," you aren't providing anything intelligent or reasonable for a child to even understand. Fear isn't a good tool for this. Admitting that some things in your religion must be taken on faith, and explain the rest honestly, and you've got a better shot at actually bringing your kids into the fold. Religion in schools isn't going to stop violence and disobedience. Good parenting is. I'll make sure to keep reminding my law makers, school boards, and congresscritters that our publicly-funded schools *cannot* lawfully endorse any religion or force its students to participate in religious ceremonies. Our freedom of religion, granted to us by the bill of rights, includes a freedom *from* religion. The last thing we need are more laws, anyway. We just need better parents. Wish we could find some :)

"Don't you all want your children and loved ones safe while at school?" of course I want them safe in school...at home..at the park...when we go out and so on... "God answers all of my prayers." YOUR prayers...thats the key FOR YOU which is fabulous but its not that way for EVERYONE "We should really get some letters going out to the law makers, school boards and congress if need be." Why would I do that? I DONT WANT prayer back in the schools..not only does it NOT belong there but its also discriminating towards those students and staff memebers that ARENT Christian...If anything I'd write letters to congress for recess to be brought back "Prayer changes everything" again, thats for YOU which is great...but its not for everyone whichis what ppl need to start realizing

in my time when im still in school we pray always before and after class and it feels good it makes me more prayerful and be able to talk to God always..im not aware now that schools dont pray anymore in class...well yeah prayer must be imposed..

So, for all of you who are for prayer being put back in school, how upset are you going to be when your children come home quoting another religion's prayers? How are we going to decide which prayers should be allowed and whose prayers are not going to be allowed? Are you going to only allow one religion's prayers, or are you going to accept all religion's prayers, including pagan religions and Satanism?

The United States is not at the place anymore where religion can be forced upon its students.

It most definitely should not! How ridiculous. First and foremost, not all children in those schools belong to the same religion, or any religion at all, and it is wrong to make children activiely participate in a religion which they don't belong to. If this happened, I would not allow my children to go to public school. Secondly, your viewpoint is very naive. There are catholic schools where the children pray many times a day, and these still have the same problems among students as public ones. Whether they pray and whether they're christian or not is not related to how well students behave. I think praying is a good thing, but to force children to do it...especialy to the god of a certain religion not all of them belong to, is in my eyes a disgusting idea.

Personally i don't think that prayers solves everything, look at history, a lot of people that prayed and were highly religious waged war on others (muslim fundamentalist also pray). I believe that you should have the choice to pray, but also not to pray. In belgium, my home countryn, there is no prayer in public schools, only in catholic schools and we don't have that much bad behaviour. If you want an answer to behaviour problems structural changes might be a better answer then prayer (smaller classes,schools...), just my opinion.

I went to a private Catholic school where we prayed and had religion classes. I honestly don't think it would work to put prayer back into public schools. Not everyone sees it the way you do and there would be a lot of arguing. For those people who don't believe, they don't their to be children to be influenced by that. It's a good idea but it would never work.

It would work where all pupils followed Christianity, but it would cause uproar with pupils and families who are not of that faith. It may even segregate pupils, as those who are not Christian would have to be exempt from the prayer. Some people may even be bullied. If people want to pray, they should do so of their own will and not forced. If they wanted to pray at school they would already, in their own time. Disobedience needs to be tackled with discipline, not something controversial such as religion.

I think that prayer is still allowed in schools,if it wasn't students would get into trouble for saying a prayer to God. I don't know why some people interpret it as a force. Anyway prayer really is allowed. When I was in high school in 1993 we had a moment of silence. During that time we had a choice to pray or not pray. It was mandatory that everyone is quite during that time to respect those who were praying. No one can force anyone from not praying. Anyone can pray all throughout the day. I don't think that a student will get into trouble for saying grace before they eat their meals. Or saying a silent prayer before taking a test. God always wins!

Yes I definitely think they should put prayer back in schools.This nation as a whole has turned their back on God and you see whats happening in the world today.Alot of people have no conscience.The Bible talks about peoples conscience being seered with a hot iron.

I am in total agree ment with you !Just look at the state of our country i believe since we are taking God out of our lives he may be taking his hand of protection off of us !

I couldn't agree more! I think the absence of prayer takes away the hope and faith in God that our children need to grow. We have become a culture that may be VERY diverse in beliefs, ethnicity, etc but we originally were "ONE NATION UNDER GOD" and I think we need to stay that way.

I think prayers should be allowed in any school, not just private. God can help all people no matter where they are and sometimes the power of prayer can help troubled people and maybe it would help with some of the violence in schools these days.

I agree with you on this one too. Definatly. I think they should have a class to where the kids can decide wheather or not they want to be in it and they can pray every morning and maybe even have a small bible study.