School Prayer (1 Viewer)

[Phanatical]

What are your opinions on mandatory school prayer in public schools? In many schools, especially Primary schools, it remains mandatory to learn and recite a school prayer.

 

[sped_kid01]

i think no

i couldnt be bothered t oexplain

but basically prayer does not relate to everyone in society, everyone is different, and no child should be forced to pray

 

[mr EaZy]

when u say mandatory- that means everybody must do the same prayer right?

hmmmmm, it depends on what students go to a school, like if its an all catholic or christian school then, YEs provided the parents are all unanimously in agreement.

oh, but for public school......... i dunno

 

[Phanatical]

I did refer to public schools, and I'm talking about every student at that school, whether they're of a christian or islamic denomination, jewish, hindu, jain, buddhist, satanist or atheist.

 

[Plebeian]

This was our primary school prayer:

"This is our school,
Let peace dwell here.
Let the rooms be full of contentment,
Let love abide here.
Love of one another,
Love of mankind,
Love of life itself,
And love of God.
Let us remember that as many hands make a home,
So many hearts make a school. "

If you took out the reference to God, it wouldn't really matter what religion it was. I don't think it's a really bad thing, not like they're indoctrinating you with fundamentalist religious beliefs. Perhaps a bigger issue is the weekly scripture we had in primary school (like most schools I would assume) even though we weren't a Catholic school or suchlike.

 

[CrashOveride]

Public schools, which arn't religiously orientated etc (generally this is infered from the title public, as opposed to private or religious etc). shouldn't have any mandatory prayers or really any religious content delivered to its pupils. They should also steer clear of global politics to some extent.

I went to a public school we're there was mandatory prayers in the junior school (K-3) and recitation religious songs etc. I also recall in later years, students usually in yr 5 or 6 study something a TV media called BTN - Behind the news. We were doing something on Iraq and i can still remember my teacher, with a very insistent and convincing facial expression, telling us how Saddam was a bad and evil guy and all that jazz..

Kids should be getting more proficient at reading and numeracy and those things at a young age, leave the religion and politics until later when young minds can better evaluate and comprehend these kinds of things.

/rant

 

[joujou_84]

i say fuk the skool prayer.............hell i dont evn know the australian anthem..... ......yes i know...........how un-australian of me.....

 

[hfis]

I say nay. No one should be forced to pray. Even in Christian schools, the staff should be aware that Jesus teaches against "meaningless" (ie; pre-written, drilled-in) prayer.

 

[Xayma]

No.

Parents should be able to send their children to public schools and not have religion forced upon their children. If they want religious influences then there are religious schools for that,

 

[loquasagacious]

I think it is morally wrong to force prayer on people.

I also think of this as an anachronism of a by-gone era.

 

[Phanatical]

This was our primary school prayer:

"This is our school,
Let peace dwell here.
Let the rooms be full of contentment,
Let love abide here.
Love of one another,
Love of mankind,
Love of life itself,
And love of God.
Let us remember that as many hands make a home,
So many hearts make a school. "

If you took out the reference to God, it wouldn't really matter what religion it was. I don't think it's a really bad thing, not like they're indoctrinating you with fundamentalist religious beliefs. Perhaps a bigger issue is the weekly scripture we had in primary school (like most schools I would assume) even though we weren't a Catholic school or suchlike.

At our school, we had a school prayer affirming our allegience to the Christian "God", and a school pledge affirming our allegience to the School.

I also oppose scripture classes in our public schools, both in primary and secondary schools. I don't think groups like ISCF have any right to post their christian bullshit all over our schools, or even to come into our schools and indoctrinate students at all.

Even worse, at my high school, these scripture classes were opt-out, so if anybody forgot their permission notes, they were forced to attend Scripture. Once, the school brought in some sort of evangelist and we were all expected to attend unless we opted out. A few people forgot to bring their notes, and were Forced to participate in the session. The rest of us were left in a classroom to wait it out.

 

[Scanorama]

I think Como West Public School has/had school prayer every morning. One or two parents were furious about that and wrote some complain letters to the Department of Education. The matter then gone up to the Parliament and the principle explained 1. Australian is a Christian country; 2. Most students from the school are Christian and 3. The majority of parents did not oppose the idea. If I remember correctly, the Department of Education did let the school to go ahead and for those students who do not wish to participate, they can simply not join the prayer every morning.

I guess if the majority of the school agree to have the prayer and allow those who do not wish to participate not to join the prayer, I can't see the problems having prayers.

 

[malkin86]

I remember that prayer! "This is our school" - we didn't have the God reference, so it was more like a meditation or a general goodwill sort of thing.

I think the real travesty is the opt-out scripture lessons, with non-scripture being like detention.
I would have really loved a comparitive religion class, even when I was in late infants, focussing on the moral similarities and showing the cultural differences.

I didn't get to do Studies of Religion in yr 11 and 12 because my head English teacher biased everyone against doing it. I didn't like him.

ISCF is student-run, I believe, in conjunction with some churches.

 

[Scanorama]

I went to ISCF when i was in Year 10, it was great fun. Basically is run by students and with conjunction with the local church. The best thing is probably the occasional free lunch (pizza, fish and chips etc).

 

[spiny norman]

Bugger off!

Why on Earth should prayer be mandatory? What a silly suggestion.

 

[rumour]

Nay, where did you hear this?

 

[Phanatical]

Hear what? I went through it myself when I was in Primary and High school. And I spent my entire school life at government schools.

 

[soha]

this is our skool
let peace dwell here
let the room be full of contentment
let love obide here
love 4 one another
and love 4 life itself
let us rememebr that
as many hands build a house
so many hearts make a skool
.....we had to say that and when i look back on it i dont have a problem with it..
i like the poem or prayer or whatever...

 

[Phanatical]

At Greystanes Public, we had an "Our Father" at the beginning, several "God" references, and a "Amen" at the end.

 

[Kulazzi]

I think it actually depends on how religious the family is. If a family is very religious, then obviously prayer would be very important to them however I don't think that it should come into effect until high school. In primary school there are scripture classes however once in high school, in Islam for example, it is important that you should pray five times a day. So sometimes the library can be used as a prayer area unless majority are of the same religion then there probably should be a prayer room. A friend of mine who is Christian says that she prays every night, before she goes to bed. You know, where you kneel on your knees and say the Christian prayer by your bedside. So yeah, it really depends on how religious the family is. And some schools do hold (mainly) christian seminars, for eg. at my school they have CHAOS every wed: Christians Hyped About Our Saviour