My children come home crying
- Thread starter LDB
- Start date
While I'm positive there have been many factors affecting positive and negative behavior in school students over the years, I'm equally certain that school prayer is at least a significant factor, because if nothing else it teaches conformity and how to behave respectfully and civilly in a given situation, even if you don't agree with or believe in the prayer.
There are people who are not sports fans and want to eliminate sports programs from schools because they think it's a waste of time and money, and children can get hurt. They dismiss sports as irrelevant. But by doing so they are eliminating the lessons about life that come from playing sports. Sports teaches you how to work hard and be a constructive member of a group. And to be a leader. Sports gives you discipline and persistence, the drive to better yourself. It teaches patience, responsibility, creativity, and professionalism. There are many things that formal classroom education can not teach to students that can only be experienced by being a team player and getting the experience working hard to achieve a goal.
The elimination of any and all religion from public schools we have eliminated many of the life lessons that are only learned (or at the very least best learned) from religion. Our very society and our laws are religious based, and the lessons we must learn in order to have an ordered civil society can clearly only come from religion. You and others may disagree, and I'm a devout agnostic, but the results are plainly evident. Religion teaches people how to be good people, the concept of kindness, to have a good heart, the ability to treat others with kindness, love and understanding. It teaches the difference between right and wrong. It teaches charity, and for the right reasons. It teaches people how to overlook another's flaws and foibles, to not "correct” these faulty attributes with hostility, to be able to actively identify with the other human and interact with them in a positive way. Prayer in schools also, oddly enough, teaches respect and tolerance for others' beliefs, especially if you do not share their religious beliefs. It teaches you how important a person's beliefs are to them, whatever those beliefs are, and to respect them for it.
You can't learn these things unless you also learn their context and practice them within that context. Violence, and students disrespecting and talking back to teachers, is rampant in schools. They have all been told not to do that, but they haven't learned why, they haven't learned the context, they haven't learned why it's important. While I don't agree with, or even believe in religion, I know and understand how important it is to those who do, and I can respect that.
This isn't to say they should be promoting or giving Bible lessons in school. Not at all. Not even close. There should not be teaching of a religion in schools in the same manner that academic subject are taught. There should absolutely be a separation of church and state in public primary schools. But that doesn't mean that there needs to be an artificial elimination of the important thoughts, ideas and beliefs that are an important component of people's lives. Primary schools are the very places that we send our children to prepare them for life when they grow up. If they grow up without having an understandable frame of reference that religion teaches people, we have a society like we have now, and it ain't pretty.
Here's one illustration that you might find interesting. Back when I worked for Olan Mills (back when they still existed - they've since been sold to another portrait company) they had two primary divisions: the Studio Division and the Mobile Division. The Mobile Division included the Church Division as well as the Club Plan Division, where we'd go to small towns too small for a permanent studio and work out of motels instead of studios. The Church Division was where we went into churches, synagogs and mosques to take pictures and give the members a church directory. The Church Division was 80 percent of Olan Mills' business.
In the Studio Division, where studios are located in larger cities, where there were at one point 600 of studios, the rate of bounced checks was about two percent, about three per week per studio. That was, at the time, just about the national average for bounced checks (thanks to electronic transactions, the rate is now nationally about half of one percent). In the Club Plan Division, mostly small towns, the rate of bounced checks was about one percent. In the Church Division, the rate was so small that it was startling. The term used was "non-existant." One year I remember they had literally 10 checks bounce,, in a division that was the equivalent of 2100 permanent studios. Ten. That's a whopper of a life lesson, I'd say, and they learned it somewhere.
For one, I think you know me better than that. I'm far too aware and cautious of illusory corollary to make such an stupid and irresponsible mistake. Second, you should know me well enough to also know that I'm hardly biased in favor of religion. I'm pragmatic and realistic enough to not let my bias against religion color the reality. It is what it is, and just because I'm not a believer doesn't mean I should pretend, or convince myself, that it's something else, something that it's not.
Last edited:
I don't think sports should be removed from schools, I just think their value is seriously overstated. That goes for religious teaching, too, because there are just way too many examples of the destructive power of both to consider them an unmixed blessing.
I would attribute the church's rate of returned checks to the fact that most small town church affairs are closely monitored by the members. You won't find that in Pat Robertson's church, [and probably every other 'mega' church]I guarantee it.
I would attribute the church's rate of returned checks to the fact that most small town church affairs are closely monitored by the members. You won't find that in Pat Robertson's church, [and probably every other 'mega' church]I guarantee it.
It is the act of praying, more than the actual prayer, that teaches the most, whether you are the one praying or are the one observing the praying. I've never really prayed, either, but because of prayer I have learned other ways of attaining peace and comfort.
It is a parent's job, but it's not solely the parent's job. It is the job of society at large to teach values and morals, and the parent's are just one small part of that society. The parents can teach values and morals all day long, but those particular values and morals are taught and learned within a very confining vacuum. We have to live in society, and that's where the values and morals are the most important.
The assertion that values and morals are solely the job of a parent, and not of a school or of society at large, fails as soon as you look around at society and the world today. The conclusion is parents, each and every one of them, have failed on a grand scale to teach values and morals that are applicable in a civil society. People have been steadily and systematically removing the values and morals of religion from schools, and any and all state entities, and the results are abysmal. It ain't working.
Last edited:
paullud
Veteran Expediter
Think about the teams you were on and the valuable lessons you learned while playing and practicing. How has prayer in school been destructive?
Sent from my SCH-I535 using EO Forums mobile app
Last edited:
Way to many examples of the destructive power of both, huh. Again *** backwards the positives would so out pace the negative to make them miniscule in comparison most especially in sports.
Sent from my Fisher Price - ABC 123
paullud
Veteran Expediter
It is the job of parents to teach morals and values, and the job of each person to live up to them.
When religion was a daily part of every kid's education, did the adults behave any better?
Yes, they did behave better.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using EO Forums mobile app
The downsides of sports, and religion, are clear. That's not to say the baby should be thrown out with the bath water.
And you would be wrong. The church's returned check rate wasn't limited to small town churches. Small town churches didn't even make up a majority of the church business. We had to work at 12-15 small churches to equal the number of portrait sets at even a medium-sized church in a larger city. In small town and rural churches, the average was one to two days, 25-30 sets per day.
One example is the Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, along I-40 just east of Memphis. You can't miss it. It's marked by three very large crosses. They have an attendance average of more than 6,500 people per service, and they have three services each Sunday. The chapel seats 7000. We had 5 crews (one photographer and two portrait consultants each) that worked that church for a total of 41 days, with each crew shooting an average of 42 sets per day. We did more than 8000 sets. The finished Church Directory looked like a big city phone book it was so big. In 8000 sets, not a single check bounced. Not one.
The same is true for Mount Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, with a weekly attendance of more than 10,000, it is the oldest and largest black church in Nashville. Not a single bounced check. I know that seems shocking, but it's true.
Every month we got a report of bounced checks from every shooting location nationally, both studios and mobile shoots, and which checks were ours. We got charged back our commissions for those checks until they cleared. The startling disparity in the bounced check rate for churches and non-churches certainly was shocking to me when I first started there, so I can understand people's skepticism. But it's a fact. And it's one that would be foolish to dismiss and not look for a meaning in there somewhere. All you have to do is ask yourself, "Why is this so?" and then go from there.
Not only did I have to memorize and recite the Lord's Prayer in grade school, I had to memorize and recite the Apostle's Creed, forward and backward. In Latin!
Dominoes Nabisco, cheese and crackers got all muddy.
Threw a tantrum, ergo socked a mental.
Rectum spirit, tu tu O.
etc. etc. etc. etc.
Amen.
WHACK! Ouch! I just got my knuckles smacked by a black robed apparition toting a wooden ruler.
Dominoes Nabisco, cheese and crackers got all muddy.
Threw a tantrum, ergo socked a mental.
Rectum spirit, tu tu O.
etc. etc. etc. etc.
Amen.
WHACK! Ouch! I just got my knuckles smacked by a black robed apparition toting a wooden ruler.
RLENT
Veteran Expediter
Why did you remove my posts??? One of your last post was about mega churches... I was showing what these people of God are doing with all the money they RAKE I ....was very on topic....sorry the truth hurts..but all these mega churches/ TV evangelist are crooks why does that loon Pat Robertson need $100 million dollars????? Which was mostly donated tax free by the way...
Sent from my DROID RAZR using EO Forums mobile app
Sent from my DROID RAZR using EO Forums mobile app
Off topic would be ...sure like the new pro master van....jeeez
Sent from my DROID RAZR using EO Forums mobile app
Because they were off topic.
No it wasn't. It was about some of the life lessons that people learn in a religiously moral environment, and I used a couple of mega churches as examples to Cheri's assertion that the same lessons aren't apparent in those types of churches.
Which is entirely off topic.
Not even close. The topic is how religion and prayer in schools relate to how children learn and behave in society. Coming up with abnormal, obvious examples of where it doesn't correlate, especially since the allowance of such exceptions in both religion and sports have already been mentioned.
The truth is, if you want to talk about Pat Robertson and TV evangelist crooks, you need to start a new thread. Pat Robertson and TV evangelist crooks have nothing whatsoever to do with the Lord's Prayer being recited in school, or the lessons that can be learned from it.
If you want to continue to discuss why off-topic posts get removed from threads, then you will need to start a new thread to do so, as they are off-topic here, as well. It will be much better if you start a new thread, than if I move your posts to a new thread for you.
letzrockexpress
Veteran Expediter
ha! Lol.....
WOW! In other words -- "It takes a village to raise a child".
Where have we heard that before?
paullud
Veteran Expediter
Only because the libs are destroying the country.
Sent from my SCH-I535 using EO Forums mobile app