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NEW YORK (NEA) — Ever hear the story about the teacher who had to leave her classroom for some reason? “I'll be gone a few minutes,” she warned the students, “and when I come back, don't let me catch any of you praying.” The incident may have occurred in New Jersey, to judge by recent events there. The state legislature not long ago passed a law requiring all New Jersey public school students to observe a “minute of silence” at the beginning of each school day. Nothing in the law required students to pray during that silent minute; they were equally free to en age in thoughtful introspection or, for that matter, to spend time contemplating how to put a large wad of used chewing gum on the teacher's chair. But Gov. Thomas Kean vetoed the law anyway, declaring he was afraid it was unconstitutional as merely a sly attempt to circumvent the prohibition against prayer in the public schools . — The legislature prompt the law over his veto, and the American Civil Liberties Union has now hauled the New Jersey school system into court to have the law invali dated on precisely the ground specified by Gov. Kean in his veto. There are two separate types of objection to school prayers, but it is hard to see how either of them can apply to a mere “minute of silence.” One is the objection that any form of prayer, no matter how bland and seemingly innocuous, may, or at any rate might, be offensive to some student's religious beliefs. By refusing to participate, the student in question would to that extent be ostracizing himself from the community, and might well suffer social penalties — from having fun poked at him to far more serious sorts of discrimination. But even where the form of prayer is entirely conenianie to everyone involved, the American Civil Liberties Union and similar critics have opposed such prayers anyway, on the ground that America’s public schools simply have no business, in view of the constitutional separation of church and state, prescribing conduct that implies the existence of a “th is why the New Jersey legislature's solution is so ingenious. It rides no conduct implying the existence of a deity, let a any communication addressed to Him. All it requires of oae a minute of silence, and all that can legitimately be safe from that requirement is the propo sition that people benefit from an occasional brief pause in the day's occupation. Surely that is not an unreasonable prponce. Most of us get up slightly later than we probably ought to, and spend the day racing from pillar to post. An enforced moment of contemplation — even of blank vacuity — would be a heal ing experience in our hectic lives. It would at least give us a chance to review our objectives for the day, or (if this con cerned us more) to consider our own behavior. If, despite more than two centuries under the enlightened reign of secu lar humanism, we still suspected that our lives are related to, and perhaps even governed by, the imperative of some external being, we could undoubtedly use the silent minute to acknowledge that fact. But it is preposterous to argue, as the ACLU is doing, that such a minute of silence can have no other meaning. And that contention reveals, rather strikingly it seems to me, how terrified the anti-prayer forces secretly are of the relig ious impulse whose public manifestations they are so deter mined to resist. There used to be an old Temperance duty that ran. We don't smoke, because we think That those who smoke are apt to drink. The ACLU’s version is far more insidious. We don't think, because we say That those who think are apt to pray.
Newspaper Details
Key West Citizen
Key West, Florida, US
Thu, Jan 20, 1983
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Roger M.
USA 01 Jul 2026
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