Pray for Education
Every time Slick Willie opens his mouth these days, it sounds like he’s reading bumperstickers. The man talks in packaged sound bites. He either doesn’t have deep thoughts or doesn’t want to tell anyone about ‘em. Or perhaps he thinks that the television audience -- for that’s whom he’s talking to -- isn’t up for anything with greater depth than Arkansas pond scum.
His latest wax is on prayer in schools. This is from the Saturday morning radio address which at some time might actually have been about informing the public on an important issue and now has become little more than a party propaganda forum. I suppose that with his support for prayer in schools, Clinton is trying to attract southern and conservative voters, who might have strayed from the Democrats when Clinton strayed from decency.
I think this whole prayer in schools issue is nonsense. Worse than nonsense. It shows that we have descended to a ridiculous depth in public discourse. If we stepped back from the discussion, we’d realize how entirely pointless it is. Why is it that we are involved in a pointless exercise? Why for the past thirty years have we been locked in verbal dialectics that have frozen progress in a number critical areas?
We need to resolve these matters and move forward. We can’t remain mired in a slothful repartee that just looks for new slogans to reiterate the same arguments. Neither side has moved. They look like one of those old Pong games, with the ball traveling back and forth across the net and no one is hitting it any more.
Back to the issue of school prayer. We should be praying for our schools, not in them; we’re not doing much else for education.
Come on, people, if you want to pray visibly — if you can’t talk to whomever by yourself and quietly — then do it before school or after school, and don’t take up school time with your pseudo-spiritual narcissism. If your need is to make a spectacle of yourself, then maybe, get thee to a none-of-we.
Second, the spiritual component of life -- though vital to the health of our society — has been ignored at best. We should be instructing our children in the various belief systems that are celebrated around the world, their commonalities and their differences. The public schools shouldn’t be rubber stamps for the local doctrine. Children need to know that there is a choice. And folks, if yours is best choice, let the children make it for themselves.
Finally, the issue of abortion, gun control, nuclear power, drug policy, and so many others have all rusted like this one of school prayer into a narrow lurch. Too bad we can’t find true leaders who will say folks, Enough is enough. We’re gonna try something new and different. And if it doesn’t work, we’re gonna try something else.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.
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