Prayer in Public School

What is your first reaction to the anxiety that comes before a big test or an important game? Most of us pray to the Lord to help and protect us. What if when you did so, you were sent to the office and reprimanded, or even suspended for it? This is happening across the country more and more every year. Prayer in public school has been a controversial and politically charged issue for more than 40 years, recently more than ever, and has split the American people on whether students should be allowed to lead stadium crowds in religious invocations at high school sporting activities and graduation ceremonies.

The U.S. Supreme Court must decide whether student-led prayer over a school's public address system "fall on the permissive side of the line." Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg relentlessly represented the policy as a breach in the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state, therefore causing the Supreme Court to doubt the policy.

Many local court cases have been immediately dismissed on the grounds that football games are different from school because they are extracurricular. This being as it may, other cases were heard due to the fact that the majority of the spectators at school sporting events, such as football games, are students and these activities are considered a school function as much as is a school assembly or pep-rally.

The court's newest venture into this area of constitutional law is an ABC news poll that states two-thirds of Americans think students should be permitted to lead such prayers. Earlier this year in Texas' Republican primary, 94 percent of the voters approved a resolution that backs student-initiated prayer at school sporting events. Texas Governor George W. Bush, the republican presidential candidate, made his support of student-led prayer clear.

In a written statement released after a recent court session, Vice President Al Gore, the democratic presidential candidate, said allowing students to engage in voluntary individual prayer is not only acceptable, but is worthy of protection.

A federal court ruled last year that school officials must tell students to keep their graduation ceremony comments and prayers "nondenominational" so as to not offend any one religion, but is it really possible to allow organized prayer without offending at least one person? Today's young people are so diverse that it would narrow-minded of someone to think that no one would be the least bit upset by a group prayer. The Supreme Court chose to focus only on sporting activities, passing up the graduation ceremony dispute even though very often these types of cases have been more controversial.

Marian Ward, the Santa Fe, New Mexico senior who won a federal judge's permission last fall to lead such prayers at her school's home football games, stated, "I feel like this country is founded on principles of...individual freedom. I'm not here to put down other people...but I still don't think that changes my right to exercise my free speech."

But does freedom of speech include public and organized prayer? The Tale Feathers Staff would like to hear what you think.

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