Oh really? Of course, I haven't been in school for a long, long time. But I was under the impression prayer was pretty much not allowed.

I guess I shouldn't put it that way. I'm sure some kid could walk down the halls praying. But rather that there could not be any kind of formal or "led" prayer in any classroom.


Not that I have a problem with that. I think it's out of place, and apples to oranges to compare it with purple hair. I'm sure hair-dying sessions are also neither allowed nor discussed as part of the ciriculum or class activities.


But I'm sure the feeling exists among Christian kids that prayer is very looked down upon in a scholastic environment, and that it's a bit of p.c. that's gone overboard.


Of course, I more bemoan the fact that - gangs the cause or not - kids are often not free to dress as they want, and certainly are not free to express political or other opinions in the scholastic environment.

I don't know what it was like at other high schools but at my public high school there were several religious student groups that held group prayers around the campus throughout the day during non-class times. And many students that audibly prayed in classes during periods where general talking was allowed and silently to themselves when they weren't.

Nobody ever raised any objection to that. Just to the time a substitute English teacher tried to lead a class in a prayer.

Though I'm sure there have been plenty of examples of school administrators cracking down too hard out of fear of litigation just as there are many examples of school administrators being way too lenient out of personally held religious beliefs.

That's correct, and is what my response said. Prayer is not banned from schools. The school teaching/leading/forcing prayer is. As it should be.

Will you guys get your stories straight damnit! Was 1985 or 1999 - I need to know these things.

Read the page, it explains. 1999 is the earliest real solid find, there are earlier references as far back as '85 but they're not so solid.

Ditto my experience. Then again, I grew up in Michigan...

Do Christian kids honesty feel they're being stifled by school policy, I wonder.


Then there was that horribly decided (imo) lawsuit a while back of the kid who displayed an Anti-Bush sign off of school property (but at a school-related event) and was ruled to not have free-speech rights under those circumstances.

Or the fact that kids CAN'T have purple hair or wear the Queen's purple clothes because any freaking color can be associated with some violent gang or another. Would you sit still for wearing a gray burlap sack to school everyday??? I would have been in the principal's office sticking up for my principles every day of the school year.

I think these limitations on freedoms at school have gone too far, and so I wonder about how Christian kids feel about the prayer issue.

Why would improper limiting of personal prayer be a problem only for Christian kids?

I don't think it is. But they seem to be the ones making a stink about it.

Yes, because they seem to be the ones that want more than the freedom to use their own time for their personal prayer and feel it's somehow an infringement on their rights to not require everyone pray.