School prayer

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School prayer in its most common usage, refers to state-sanctioned and/or mandatory prayer of students in schools. Depending on the country and the type of school, organized, state-sponsored prayer may be a required activity, may be optional for students, or may be restricted or banned outright. Controls on mandatory prayer in schools can be seen as an element of separation of church and state (mainly in the United States); both requiring and restricting prayer in schools can be viewed as going against such separations.

Contents

1 United States

1.1 At Graduation

2 United Kingdom
3 France
4 Turkey
5 References
6 See also

United States

Main articles: Education in the United States and Religion in the United States

School prayer is an issue that has been controversial in the United States since the early 20th century. In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, school days customarily opened with an oral prayer. However, citing separation of church and state as specified in the First Amendment and applied to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment, opponents of the practice were successful in getting mandatory prayer abolished through the judicial process, though not eliminating prayer altogether. Proponents of school prayer have worked to reestablish the practice. These recent proponents are largely, but not exclusively, Christians of various denominations. However, some major Christian denominations are opposed to the practice.

In the U.S., staff-sanctioned prayer in public schools was effectively outlawed by two landmark Supreme Court decisions: Engel v. Vitale [1962] and Abington Township v. Schempp [1963]. Following these two landmark cases came the Court's decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman [1971]. This ruling established the so-called "Lemon test" which states that in order to be constitutional under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment any practice sponsored within public schools must: 1) have a secular purpose, 2) must neither advance nor inhibit religion, and 3) must not result in an excessive entanglement between government and religion.

The issues surrounding this ruling seemed fairly straightforward until the 1990s, when the courts began addressing prayer at school extracurricular events with less clarity. While some courts allowed student prayers from the podium at graduation exercises, a federal Appellate court in Houston ruled in 1999 that student-led prayer in a huddle before a football game is unconstitutional. Much of the recent controversy has revolved around prayer at school athletics events. Guidance was provided by the Supreme Court in Santa Fe v. Doe [2000] when it upheld a lower court ruling invalidating prayers conducted over the public address system prior to high school games at public school facilities before a school-gathered audience.

Regarding the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the courts have consistently ruled that students' expressions of religious views through prayer or otherwise cannot be abridged unless they can be shown to cause substantial disruption in the school. Reinstatement of the practice is attempted in different forms in a number of areas of the U.S. Few areas allow oral prayer, but some introduced a "moment of silence" or "moment of reflection" when a student may, if he or she wishes to, offer a silent prayer. Besides citing separation of church and state, some opponents question why children cannot simply pray during non-school hours, or during school hours but not as part of an organized, state-sanctioned activity.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

At Graduation

Recently, some high schools have banned prayer from graduation ceremonies. In May 2006, the ACLU of Tennessee convinced Munford High School's principal to ban official prayer at graduation. [link] In response, students pulled out cards with the Lord's Prayer written on them and began to read. Also, some have concluded that the school's ACLU club faculty adviser has lost her job over the incident. [link]

United Kingdom

Main articles: Education in the United Kingdom and Religion in the United Kingdom

In England and Wales, the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 states that all pupils in state schools must take part in a daily act of collective worship, unless their parents request that they be excused from attending. The majority of these acts of collective worship are required to be "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character", with two exceptions:

Religious schools, which should provide worship appropriate to the school's religion (although most religious schools in the UK are Christian.)
Schools where the Local Education Authority's Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education has determined that Christian worship would not be appropriate for part or all of the school.

Despite there being a statutory requirement for schools to hold a daily act of collective worship, many do not. OFSTED's 2002-03 annual report, for example, states that 80% of secondary schools are failing to provide daily worship for all pupils

France

As a declared 'laicist' (roughly 'religiously neutral', secular) state since the French Revolution in 1789, France has no school prayers. In fact, public servants are advised to keep their religious faith private, and may be censured if they display it too openly. The French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools goes beyond restricting prayer in schools, and bans the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by pupils in public primary and secondary schools.

Turkey

Unknown to many people in the West, the predominantly muslim country of Turkey is in the public sphere a strongly secular nation. In this regard, it is much like France, on whose system of laicism its founder Kemal Ataturk modeled the rules on religion when he reformed his country in the early 20th century. School prayer is therefore unknown, and suspected religious motivations can cause serious difficulties for public servants.

References

Ofsted Report 2002 [link]
British Humanist Association [link]
["Munford Grads Go in Prayer"] Retrieved July 15, 2006
["Munford ACLU Adviser is Fired"] Retrieved July 15, 2006