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October 5, 2006
When God Came to My Classroom
Monday I made a couple of snarky comments concerning part of Brian Rohrbough's misguided remarks on the CBS News Free Speech segment. There is another issue that Mr. Rorbough raised that I think needs more attention. In the course of his remarks Mr. Rorbough said,
For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school . . .
Well, I don't know much about God being expelled from the school. I do know exactly when God talk was introduced to the schools I attended. It was in 1954 when the words "under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance that we recited every day. I was in the seventh grade and had been saying the pledge the "old way" everyday for a little over seven years. The new words were hard to remember and for several weeks, there was some giggling, mostly the boys, while the recitation was going on. I remember one boy, having failed to add the new words, shouting out "damn" at about the time most of the class was saying "indivisible." The whole class exploded in laughter. If I remember correctly, that ended the recitation for that day. Shirley, who when to a school in a small town in Indiana, doesn't remember saying the Pledge of Allegiance in High School at all although they did in elementary school in the pre "under God" days. She also doesn't think that there was ever a public prayer, said out loud or asked to be said in silence, in or out of the classroom, in her elementary school, junior high school or high school.
There are only few people I know who went to public school in the 1940 and 1950s that have any memory of God being mentioned in public schools before 1954, excepting, of course, a common oath uttered from time to time on the playground. For a short time, about twice a week, perhaps for a semester, in 1958 or 1959 a student volunteer gave a prayer over the public address system during lunch at my High School here in Southern California. Following the pray, the school disc jockey, a senior who was also a volunteer, played music while we ate. He did this every day prayer or no. We mostly ate and talked during the prayer. With few exceptions, even the most religious among us preferred the music. When lessoned to, the lunch prayers were often fuel for ridicule. The practice stopped as it had begun: abruptly and without notice. While the whole group that I hung out with went to church in those days, everyone I knew was happy to see the noon prays end.
But there was certainly not a moral vacuum at school. But I am convinced that the positive association of "God" words and "moral vacuum" words is a sure sign of a moral vacuum.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 5, 2006 8:24 PM | Read more on Religion |
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