Guest Columnist James Ingram
One of the most ridiculous arguments regarding the horrendous failure of public schools in urban America is that the source of that failure is a lack of prayer in the schools.
You hear it all the time. Usually someone over the age of 50 will utter these (or similar) words: “The day that we stopped praying in school was the day that our kids stopped learning.” That is utter nonsense on multiple levels.
However, try explaining that to Illinois legislators who, recently, passed a law mandating that students observe a moment of silence at the beginning of each school day.
Now, clearly, this isn’t mandated prayer; but it definitely resembles a back-door approach to appease the religious lobby which believes in such lunacy.
Don’t get me wrong. I frequently pray or have (wink, wink) “moments of silence” during the course of the day (for a variety of reasons). No one can legislate or, for that matter, prevent me from doing so. That’s between me and my God.
So it is with school prayer. My question is: What (or who) prevents students (and their parents) from praying before they leave home on any given school day? Is school prayer (somehow) more powerful? I doubt it.
One lawmaker, Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago even made the idiotic suggestion that a moment of silence might have prevented the recent Cleveland, OH incident in which a suspended 14-year-old shot two students before taking his own life.
Perhaps I’m not as astute as the distinguished representative, but I’d guess that better parenting, competent school officials, alert security guards and a good metal detector would have been a better solution. But what do I know?
Reality check. The focus of school should be E-D-U-C-A-T-I-O-N. Students can pray or be reflective on their own schedule, and I doubt that anyone will penalize them for it.
With the abysmal test scores, especially in predominantly African-American communities like East St. Louis, only a fool would use religion as an excuse when the absence of reading, writing , mathematical and analytical skills are the true culprit.
For example, I attended Boston University and competed against white students who attended the most elite prep and boarding schools in America (prior to attending BU). Not one of them ever attributed their academic prowess to school prayer or “moments of silence.”
Their intellectual abilities were, however, the result of being wealthy enough to afford the best educators, tutors, educational “boot-camps” and study abroad experiences that money could buy.
When public school teachers no longer have to serve as teacher, parent, security guard and case worker, and the U.S. government finally decides to properly fund public education (and pay teachers what they’re worth), then maybe education will take place, irrespective to whether students pray or happen to be wealthy “heathens” (like many of my BU alumni).
You can pray 20 times a day; but if you have poor, burnt-out or incompetent instructors and insufficient resources, then you will receive a poor education.
The bottom line is that as long as chemistry, calculus, physics and algebra tests are given in any school, then prayer will always be an integral part of a student’s academic ritual … law or no law! Lack of prayer is not the problem but, rather, lack of education.
Email: jtingram_1960@yahoo.com.