Religion has been a profound part of human culture since time immemorial. In fact, the earliest records of organised religions can be traced back to cave paintings. Religion has shaped human culture and lives since the inception of society, yet what faces us now is a question of some import. Is religious prayer something that should be part of our schools?
Countries around the world that claim secularism as a central tenant of their constitution have outlawed school prayer with France as the leading example. Now while France comes with its own set of controversies regarding religious secularism in particular considering “the hijab ban” it does raise a pertinent question. Is school prayer something truly harmful that should be outlawed?
A school is a place of learning, a citadel of enlightenment from where a child receives their education. Children, who are naturally impressionable, attend these institutions for the purpose of receiving knowledge. A child’s quest to acquire this knowledge puts an educator in a unique position of power as the information they provide is assimilated by a child and becomes the foundation of the principles that guide the child. More than that a school is responsible for the fostering of ideas and principles.
The fundamental issue then arises – can religion be present in the sphere of education given the influence this education has. This sphere is the education the child receives, facts such as 1+1=2 or that the earth is a geoid. The power of this sphere is to make what is in it unquestionable for the child. Religion is by its nature subjective, not just in the differences between religions but in divisions between religions themselves. It is not fact to be portrayed as education, its values not to be espoused without the understanding and context required to separate the values and ideals of the religion from your own understanding of right and wrong, your own set of moral regulations.
A child does not possess the unique ability to differentiate as a child does not have his own set of moral regulations. The very purpose of education is to form these morals. Leviticus 18:22 or Manu 1-91, verses of holy books that preach homosexuality is a sin, discuss the moral implications of abortion or describe a system of society which bounds castes considered to be impure to the servant duty of these “higher” castes.
Innocent lines you may say: what could a child glean from these? It is a matter of interpretation you may cry in protest but it is not. Religion, like any other great institution of humanity has some inherent flaws, a characteristic of anything so deeply entangled with humanity. While it is undeniable that religion is progressing, the rate of this progress is incredibly slow. Upon what cosmic scale will we measure the time for regressive ideologies institutionalised by books, temples, idols, devotees and culture to be liberalised.
That is the critical question. For while individual Imams, fathers and brahmins may preach liberal ideas of progression and the unity of humanity they are simply that: individuals. Change on an institutional level is fettered by extremism and established ideologies. It is not the individual messengers of a religion who are interacting with these children – it is prayers and scripts born in a different era which are never revised and are becoming a foundational element of these children’s growth.
We do not stand for the suppression of religion: much to the contrary, we espouse the ideals of equality and fairness. Religion taught at home cannot be stopped. Religion preached in the halls of a church or a mandir cannot be stopped. Yet we know there is an inherent difference between what is taught at home and in schools. What is taught at home does not come from the position of authority that education from a school comes from and can hence be questioned. Foundational ideas based on ancient religious prayer or ancient religious ideas introduced in the context of an educational setting are harmful for they fundamentally effect the next generation we are raising.
We cannot afford the next generation to hold deep biases, to be bigoted, to question ones existence on the basis of who they love, to outlaw the ability for a pregnant women to abort, to preach violence in the name of a holy war or to tie individuals to pre designed positions in the lowest echelons of society based upon their caste. We will inherit a messy world, a world of extreme polarisation in religion and in politics and a hundred other battle lines, a world where the right and authoritarian ideals are seeing a global rise and we are slowly approaching a pivotal point for humanity. The world forged in the aftermath of the bloodiest carnage we have ever seen now faces a test of its existence.
There are many many things we must to do to ensure the survival of those ideals and principles and one of those integral things is to not allow school prayer. It is dangerous and its ability to cause damage is sufficient disqualification. Subjective ideals and principles of a particular group should never be given as education, should never enter a setting of learning for they must be understood with detachment in the context of questioning its laws and its morals for that is the only proper way to adopt religion.