REBUTTAL -- God is alive and well in public schools

Steve Smith, please, for God’s sake, do a little homework before you

spout off. I realize you are a columnist, and part of your job is to stir

up the community pot a little and force us to think.

You do a very good job in that regard, if you’ll pardon the

understatement. But you’re also a journalist, and journalists have a

moral responsibility to do research and get the facts straight.

The Supreme Court did not ban God or the mention of God in school.

I am a high school history teacher and my state-approved textbooks

have numerous chapters on God and religion. The Christian Club meets and

prays regularly on our campus, and many of our students are active

members of various church youth groups.

In the religion unit I teach to my ninth-graders, they read excerpts

from Genesis, the New Testament, as well as excerpts from the Koran and

the Bhagavad Gita.

We discuss prayer in class a great deal. I tell my students that they

are free to pray at any time, but that I will not impose my beliefs on

them. Their beliefs are sacred to them, and I have no business trying to

change them. What the Supreme Court said is that I cannot impose my

particular style of prayer on them.

I cannot force them to recite Buddhist prayers, Hindu prayers or

Christian prayers. I cannot tell them they must pray my way, or even

worse, the government’s way. I certainly cannot force them to pray that

God will help them win a football game, even if the majority of teenagers

voted on it. This would be demeaning to our constitution and to God.

You should read a little history, Steve. It will make you a better

writer. Our founding fathers grew up in an era where millions of people

had been slaughtered in the name of some religious belief, where

governments intent on forcing people to believe and pray a certain way

were willing to kill and maim to force religious conformity.

Thomas Jefferson and those other brilliant men were determined that

that would never happen in our country. They realized, as you should,

that belief is a personal choice and should never be dictated in any way

by a government.

On a personal note, I grew up in this area long before Smith was born,

in an era when prayer was forced on us in school. When I was in fourth

grade, my well-intentioned teacher made us stand up one day and recite

the Lord’s Prayer.

I don’t know if there were any Jewish children in my class; Jews and

other non-Christians kept a very low profile in that “enlightened” era.

But I did find out on that day that the version I had learned in Catholic

religion classes did not exactly match the majority Protestant version.

As I blurted out the words I had been taught, I suddenly realized that

the rest of the kids were staring at me. From then on, I and a few others

were referred to as the “cat-lickers.”

Is this what Smith wants? Another way to divide us?

We are a great country because we allow religious freedom. Ironically,

because we do not force a particular religion or form of prayer on our

citizens or on our students, we are a very religious nation.

I believe we have the highest ratio of church attendance of any major

country in the world because people feel free to worship as they choose.

Don’t change that. Please don’t force me to make my students pray a

certain way.

God is alive and well in public school. But he may not be a football

fan.

JOE ROBINSON

History teacher

Newport Harbor High School