My son asked a question...?

Question

During a phone conversation several months ago, he asked, "Dad, you know I'm not what someone would call a religious person. But, do you think there is any connection between the school shootings and the removal of prayer from school? When you were a kid, (I'm 51) they didn't have mass killings but the school day was started with prayer. Now, there is no prayer, but there are shootings."

The question I'm asking is there any connection between the massacres we are experiencing today and the removal of prayer in our public schools?

Answer 1

When you were a child lots of things were different.
* More families attended church
* Discipline was stricter in the home and at school
* There was a lower drop out rate for drugs/alcohol etc.

I believe that anything that gives children a sense of value, self discipline, and education should remain.

I think they should allow prayer ( Pray to whatever God you warship) and incorperate stricter discipline guidelines for drugs/alcohol, skipping school, disrespecting teachers etc...

If you look at the history of the VA murderer, he was pushed along by his parents/teachers even though they thought he had deep psychological problems. If you have deep psychological problems, I am not sure that prayer or harsher discipline is going to be effective by itself. I think he needed more counseling and if it was as bad as they portray, he needed to be locked up for awhile and evaluated to see if he was a threat to himself or others.

Answer 2

There are two problems with what you're implying:

1 - How many public schools are there that don't have *school-sponsored* prayer? And how many massacres have there been in these schools?

The percentage is rather low. You don't hear about the day-to-day "nonshootings." The events stick in your head because they are out of the ordinary, and, as we all know, no news is good news.

2 - The school shootings are the result of many complex events in society. You can't just pick one change that has occurred, and then say it's the sole cause. It's not like the Supreme Court struck down school-sponsored prayer, and we started having shootings the day after the ruling took effect. There is no single cause, or even a single trend that's spawned related events; the problem is bigger than that.

To put it another way, think about how people have blamed these problems on violent video games. The talk about banning the games, without looking at the reasons why violent games are popular for a few segments of the video game community, and how video games as a whole influenced, and have been influenced by, the culture.

Answer 3

Well, I don't think that's quite the cause. I mean, Starting the day off with a prayer would probably be a good thing, but you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of students from all sorts of religions in the schools and collages these days, and it wouldn't be right to make them say a christian prayer every day. After all, how would you like to be forced to say a Hindu prayer every day or something?

Anyway, I believe the problem was social and physiological rather than religious. Things are very different today than what they use to be. it's only natural that with technological and social change and progress, that new problems would come about which previously weren't present.

Answer 4

correlation does not necessarily prove causation so it is hard to tell.

They also took spanking out of school. When I was a kid they practically tarred our backsides and now nobody is allowed to touch the students no matter how out of control they are. Maybe that is more to blame.

There have been alot of changes since you were in school. They also have fewer in tact 2 parent families raising kids. They also have few mothers staying home. Parents are more defensive when someone else tries to correct their child. There has been a paradigm shift from parent centered to child centered family life. People don't sit and eat dinner at the table anymore.

Which thing that has changed will you blame it on? You could blame it on the fact the world quit using rotary dial telephones.

Don't get me wrong. I think prayer is good if done by someone who genuinely wants to pray. I don't see what forcing someone who doesn't believe what you do to pray will accomplish. I've heard this quite a bit lately. To me, it sounds a little like propoganda. Sorry, but I call it like I see it.

I think the minute they put prayer back in the jehova's witnesses will get mad that they don't use the word Jehova instead of Jesus and the catholics might get mad that nobody ever does hail mary and the unitarians will get up in arms if someone mentions trinity and you all will kill each other over it like warring factions. Why can't you just teach your kids to pray yourselves, then your kid can pretty much pray wherever they are? Shouldn't you be in charge of your own child's religious instruction?

If your daughter winds up with a muslim teacher will you get angry if they do a muslim prayer? Do you want to open that door of anything goes into your child's spiritual life based on whoever is teaching the class that year?

Do you have any idea what kind of people usually run schools? Not the kind of people I even want in charge of a child's religious instruction (unless you want their religion to be secular humanism).

Answer 5

Where there is mental illness its a bit like Murphy's law prayers or no prayers. Prayers are important though - if there were no prayers before the shooting there were plenty afterwards!!!. This is how most people cope with all sorts of tragedies. Greater tragedies which take human lives are often called 'an act of God'. Do these things happen only to people who do not pray? No; anyone can be caught out in such things. The good book tells us to be always prepared because we do not know the day or the hour.

Answer 6

Yes. I am 56, and I can attest that there is a difference in the way school was conducted back in the 50's and 60's and the way it is today. It is a historical fact that since the removal of prayer in school that the rate of violence and the drop out rate has dramatically increased. Also, the growth of game membership has increased, the instance of teen pregnancy and the divorce rate among parents, and the transient rate of families. Take God out of the public school system and society as a whole collapses. While at most colleges and universities there is no morning prayer, there is no incentive for individual prayer before starting school because it has not been established in the public school system.

Answer 7

Hahaha! In most civilized countries where there is a separation between church and state, there is no prayer in school at all... and never did occur a shooting!!
Edit: you could also say that prayers are responsible for shootings, because worldwide there were more shootings in schools with prayers than without, but that would be the same nonsense!

Answer 8

No connection.

That's just propaganda the religious wackos trying use to take more of our rights as US citizens.

What about U of T? They probably still had prayer there back then.

I think it has more to do with the availably of guns, and that many kids feel isolated cause they are left alone too much.

TV is not a baby sitter. We didn't have 'school prayer' 200 years ago.

Answer 9

The massacres the US is experiencing has nothing to do with prayer. When one can comfortably live behind an amendment that allows all citizens the freedom to bear arms (include here - mentally unstable, criminals, drug addicts...) it's like
letting a toddler loose with a box of matches and lighter fluid.
As for the prayer, if you accept without racism all your wretched....(re- statue of liberty credo) the prayer would come from which particular religion? The country you live in has become part of a far larger sphere - your son, yourself, others and myself are all part of a global village and ultimately
like the shooters of every massacre... are still largely responsible for our own actions

Answer 10

No, there isn't.

Lets put it this way... there are wars, famines, floods... how much prayer do you think it will take to stop these things?

I would say to him that sometimes people do not cope with life very well, and that we should try to avoid outcasting people who are different, because people who feel that they don't belong in society, and who have no respect, have no way of respecting others or our rules.

Tell him that if someone is behaving in a bad way, it means they probably have had a horrible life, and that we should do everything we can to make everyone belong somewhere good, to have friends, to not be ridiculed.

Pray for that.

Answer 11

That is doubtful, my good man. If you look at the last two shooters, one was a Thai and one was a Sikh. These people would have sat out of Christian prayers anyway. The question isn't about public prayer, it's about not being treated as a normal person by people in our society if you happen to have an ethnic/physical difference.