Prayer in Public Schools - Please God, knock some sense into their heads!

I've just realized that most of my posts have to deal with discrimination and prejudice, but those are areas that I feel strongly about. Today's post is another discrimination post, this time about prayer in public schools.

State-sponsored praying has become a very controversial issue lately, among other things. One common public prayer is in the Pledge of Allegiance, when it says "one nation, under God". Making students recite this together, all at once, is an act of discriminating. You may not have realized it when you were in school or just yesterday when you said it in class, but there are some very good reasons as to why the Pledge shouldn't be said in school.

The United States is built on diversity and freedom. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Everyone knows this, but lately very few have recognized it. We have skipped away from the reason we're here and taken for granted the extreme freedoms we do have. We've used our freedom of speech to bash others, who have the freedom to be who they are.

Back to the main point, not everyone believes in God, and not everyone follows the same religion. Saying "one nation, under God" may not be religiously correct for some children. This is basically a Christian statement, yet some children are Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish, Agnostic, Atheist, etc.

It is discrimination to make everyone say it. Some measures such as telling those who don't want to recite it go out in the hall is once again discrimination because you know the kids that go in the hall are going to be bashed by their peers. I think we should do away with the Pledge in public places, or alter it to exclude the "one nation, under God" part. Another option is to allow a moment of silent prayer in school where students can pray to whomever they should, or sit quietly.

But, if they are not allowing the Pledge to be said in school, they should also not:

• Put up Christmas trees or decorate for Christmas in school, nor should they have Christmas parties and they should change "Christmas Break" to "Winter Break". They also should not make students discuss Christmas in school or write about how their Christmas was.


• Have school or class Easter egg hunts and/or Easter parties, nor should they officialy discuss it.

Now, when I say discuss, I mean say things like "Did you have a good Christmas?" or "What did you get for Christmas?" or anything like that that a lot of classes do.

This is a very hot subject as religion is a very important thing to many people. I think if Congress is going to act upon the Pledge, they need to think about the other things the school does that deals with only one certain religion.