BARRING some Christian radicals who still support organized Christian prayer in public schools, most members of modern society realize the clear immorality of forcing Christian prayer upon children of other faiths. However, many school districts across the nation disagree over the topic of moments of silence, with critics arguing that the Christian majority will somehow manipulate organized silence into organized prayer. This argument fails to recognize that a moment of silence permits students of all religious and secular backgrounds to do what they wish with the time as long they do not infringe upon the rights of others.The moment of silence is not religious, benefits students of all beliefs, and makes a great addition to the school day in all public schools.
First, the moment of silence does not support religion.The public school system exists to educate pupils in preparation for life after school in a larger society, but the duty of the school ends where family life begins.While some would argue here that teachers will pervert the moment of silence into a time to organize a class prayer, there is no real evidence prove their point.While an Alabama state law was struck down in Alabama v. Jaffree due to the phrase "shall be observed for meditation or voluntary prayer," the court's ruling only had to due with the use of "prayer" in the statute.Being that the prayer in this statute was meant to be voluntary, the state was in no way decreeing public prayer in schools but rather showing that teachers could not prevent children from praying if they chose to do so.
This general idea is in perfect concordance with current constitutional precedents but the use of the word prayer made the courts remove that specific line but still uphold the moment of silence with the phrase "shall be observed for meditation" remaining as the final law.This silence allows students to do what they wish with their time, promotes pensive students, and in no way promotes a religious way of life.Comparable to "brainstorming" time given to student before writing an essay, a moment of silence each day can have a wide variety of positive effects on students.
Without real evidence to prove thatmoments of silence correspond to organized prayer, opponents such as the Freedom from Religion Foundation states on their website that "We know from experience that many teachers and principals would regard a 'moment of silence' mandate as a green light to introduce prayers." The use of "we" in this passage demonstrates that the group wishes to please their supporters rather than writing from an objective stand point, raising suspicions as to the factuality of their argument. In addition, their failure to cite incidents that "from experience" have shown correlation between the two activities (and an outstanding lack of evidence overall) proves that the group writes out of unfounded opinion seeking to move their supporters through vague sentiments rather than in any world of founded fact.
Second, the moment of silence, aside from not being religious, can benefit students of all beliefs.It gives young students a full minute to sit still and calm down before class begins, gives teachers a minute to check role if they so wish, and most importantly, gives a silent moment for students to do whatever they want without being pressured by the school to pray. This time can serve great benefit for students to structure their thoughts, plan their days, pray if they want to or do any other activity that they feel will benefit them.Or they can stare at a wall. What matters is that a majority of students will benefit from it and that no student will be harmed by it, making the one minute sacrifice of instruction well worth the time.The assertion that a moment of silence will evolve into a moment of prayer is like saying that the availability of recycling programs forces citizens to save the environment against their will.
Opponents of moments of silence in school must also consider that moments of silence have historically served as moments of contemplation to honor groups of people or to reflect on national tragedies. There has been an annual moment of silence each year since the September 11 attacks, but does this silence force people to pray? Of course not. It serves as a time for Americans to collectively reflect on a difficult event and to remember the innocent lives lost to international terrorism.
The same is true with daily moments of silence in schools. From personal experience, only a minority of students use the time to pray while others look around the room or continue reading a book. There is no evidence to support that a moment of silence leads to organized prayer in public schools nor does any line of unbiased thought. The moment of silence is a great device that offers students in public schools the opportunity to meditate and consider their lives in new perspective, and such pending state legislature mandating moments of silence in all public schools will only further increase the number of students who can benefit it.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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