Opinion of Engel v. Vitale

[Thank you for being a friend...]

We had "a moment of silence" when we were in school, but I don't know if it was ever really valued in the way it had intended to be.  It was basically 10 seconds of kids staring into space, or some of the goofy kids making faces at each other.  Sometimes it wasn't even a moment of silence, there was whispering.  Today I can imagine kids on their iPhones.

I generally do not like the idea of mandatory exercises in schools.

It reminds me too of the Pledge cases.  I don't believe that mandatory prayer promotes religiosity or devotion to God, just like I don't believe daily recitation of the Pledge promotes patriotic love for America.  Kids do it because they're told to.  They should be doing it because they truly believe in what they are saying.

We'd be better off giving them a strong U.S. History and Government curriculum, than to push them into a patriotic exercise.  Or having a veteran come in and talk about what America means to him/her.  Kids can show love for their country by doing art, writing poems, visiting historical sites.

Also, let's teach kids about the history of Religion, and also have character education where values and morals that they would be taught about in churches could be part of the curriculum.

I also think it would be nice to have instead a daily personalized prayer or "grace", with a different student saying it before the start of every day.  It would highly personal, like for example students praying for a loved one, and the rest of the class joins in.  I think that would be much more individualized and it would be all student-led.  That could be very meaningful, and that's what I would prefer over recitation of the same things every day.