The continual controversy over whether or not a
moment of silence should be part of an Illinois students day, is shocking to
me. My first reaction when we
talked about this in class was; “why does everyone even care”, but after more
thought and more research I realized we really should care. I am aware that there is a separation
of church and state, but what does that have to do with a moment of silence. Some Americans think this is unnecessary, Jerome Jancy said something
along the lines of “Ha, the state requires you to be quiet for a moment and
think?” Yes Jerome! They do and
they should. The brief amount of time could be used for anything
as 3rd grade teacher Lisa Hendricks says; "Do you know what they're asking us to do? To kind of reflect on
our day… What kind of choices are we going to make? What kind of people do we
want to be? What can we do to have a good day?” You don’t need to practice
religion to have a positive day full of good choices do you? I think its important for everyone to
have time in their busy schedules to just take a moment to think and debrief on
their life as the saying goes; “Life moves
pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once and a while, you could miss
it” Ferris Buller. Although this
is from a silly character it still holds a lot of truth. Students lives are packed with school,
activities, sports, friends family and social pressures if they don’t stop and debrief
they may miss the importance and value that this all holds. For example last year I remember fighting
with my mom before school, during the moment of reflection in advisory I
thought about how I could have avoided fighting with her, and what I should do
differently next time. My mom and
I rarely get in arguments now because I know what I was doing wrong. Therefore this moment of reflection has
really helped me, and my relationship with my mom.
Clearly the above situation has nothing to do with
practicing religion, but some Americans are too ignorant to see this. “A suburban teenager and her atheist-activist father sued the state two weeks after the law took
effect” Chicago Tribune. This
teenager could have thought about being an atheist during the fifteen seconds, no
one was asking her to pray. The
fact that this family went to such great lengths to change something that has a
little bit of religions connotation in it is mind boggling and telling about
some Americans. It shows what a
touchy subject religion is and that Americans will fight for their rights as
small or big the issue is.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-01-18/news/ct-met-moment-of-silence-0119-20110118_1_silent-reflection-dawn-sherman-quiet-moment
While I agree that it is important to stop and reflect once in a while, I think that having a law stating that there should be a "moment of reflection" every day in school is completely ridiculous. Even though people are not being forced to pray during this time, the real reason the moment of silence was put in place is because people wanted time for prayer during the school day. The only problem was that this violated the separation of church and state, so they were forced to call it a moment of reflection instead of "prayer time." And besides--do kids (in NT particularly) even use this time to reflect? After saying the pledge, the announcers on the intercom get quiet for about 10 seconds while the students continue talking. I agree with you that we all need to take a moment to stop and think about the day, but I find it silly that the government is making laws about it.
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