No, I fully understood your post, but I didn't like how you cited your school's situation and seemed to generically conclude problems are apparent in spite of religion/prayer. Excuse me if I raised your ire, but your response to Space Ghost's quote did not give a rebuttal. ------------------ Sometimes you gotta do the next best thing!
By the way, I'm going to reiterate my belief that, despite some big problems, America is better than she ever was in her 200+ yr history. ------------------ The Rockets will be the NBA champions. Believe.
Since I went to a school (some time ago) that had all of these things, I can tell you why it happened there... Poor teachers -- some barely took role, some verbally ridiculed students, some only wanted to teach the Bible, and some were just plain stupid. Poor familes -- most came from poor, minority families. They lived a life of very little money, crappy living conditions, etc. Coming to school was a release -- they could explode. I knew quite a few kids who started selling drugs to support the family. Mother lost a job, etc. Didn't help that some of the studens did have money, nice thing, etc. This usually led to theft and other conflict. Bad administrators/funding. School was run so poorly that it was impossible to really learn anything. Most of the funding went to the athletics department (I saw the actual budget, I had connections ). The registrar got in trouble because she altered transcripts of students so they could get athletic scholarships for college. Coach stole money out of the coke machines. In other words, a really great group of people. They had very high hiring standards. The school was diverse religiously but what was most visible Christianity. Young Life youth ministers were (illegally) allowed to come onto campus to talk with students during lunch. There were "Prayer at the Flagpole" things often. The Big Bang and evolution were only briefly covered in biology and treated as "just something you have to say" becuase of all the protests fro creationists. There is more, but I do not wanna go into it... In other words, the problems existed in spite of religious presence. ------------------ Whitey will pay.
Who said anything about forced prayer??? ------------------ Sometimes you gotta do the next best thing!
By the way, I want to reiterate what I said, but I don't feel I should again, so don't be lazy and carefully read my prior posts in this thread to decipher what I am saying ------------------ Sometimes you gotta do the next best thing!
But...that was the case in MY high school. Space Ghost was asking for reasons why these things might be prevalent today, my former high school had all such problems, so I thought I would share. It was an added element that there was a pretty good amount of religion thrown around. Some private, some school promoted. I also forgot to add that we had a big Christian Athletes club. They were in the yearbook, had fundraisers at school, etc. Point was, in MY school, all of that meant nothing, as there were much bigger issues. I really don't care if you don't like my experience. Sorry if it does not fit into your ideas of "truth." ------------------ Whitey will pay.
I did. Before 1963 and Murray v. Curlett, there were still states in which prayer and Bible recitation in public schools was mandated by law. Christian prayer and Bible recitation, that is. Thankfully, the Religious Reich no longer has only the atheists to go through. Religious diversity is such that you would have rather a difficult time reinstating such policy. Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses have been instrumental not only in maintaining the status quo, but in scraping the last bits of institutionalized religion (Christianity) out of the public schools.
