The Facebook postings come with regularity. “Put Prayer back in schools.”
It may not have occurred to you, but different people, from different religions, “pray” in different ways. Some require props. Snakes. Chicken blood. The burning of various elements to produce just the right scent for the particular prayer being sent. Maybe a goat, and a broad axe. Pentagrams – those are cute. It’s been a while since I’ve been to school, so tell me, are the lockers nowadays big enough to hold all this stuff?
Oh, but you’re talking about the simple, quiet, act of just bowing one’s head for a moment or two – like, that’s how YOU do it. Right? So, tell me, who’s stopping anybody from doing that? Oh. You want that to be an organized, mandated thing. Like, the teacher (or somebody) tells the li’l chillerins to … right now … bow their heads and pray until they tell them to stop. Is it OK if Ahmed first runs to the restroom to wash himself; comes back to the room; rolls out his little rug; faces east; and then does his thing for the recommended 10 to 15 minutes? Will you arrange these mandatory prayer sessions to accommodate the specific times each day he’s supposed to do that? Would Opie, who’s been taught to throw up his hands and dance around while praying, be in any danger of tripping over Ahmed? And if Sage really does manage to call up the Dark One to 3rd Period English and that rug gets set on fire; then Tiffany’s goat panics and kicks the door open to run out into the hall; and is followed by Bubba’s snakes, and they run into the circle of Druids out there who scatter out and knock down the Wiccan bonfire and the school burns to the ground – is the insurance company going to handle the damages? Will they consider the loss to be one deductible, or two? That’s two, un-related hostile fires, the way I see it.
Just things I have to consider in my line of work.
It might be less complicated to put reading, writing, and arithmetic back into church.
