The Silent Game is on in all Illinois public schools. But is it going to be played by the Rule of Law?
On Thursday, the Illinois House overrode Gov. Rod Blagojevich's veto of Senate Bill 1463, the Silent Reflection and Student Prayer Act. The Senate voted to override last week, meaning the bill becomes law without the governor's approval. The vote on the issue was 74-37, two more than the three-fifths majority needed to override the governor's veto.
State law already permitted schools to observe a period of silence. The new law simply changes the wording from "may" to "shall."
The new state law
"In each public school classroom the teacher in charge shall observe a brief period of silence with the participation of all the pupils therein assembled at the opening of every school day. This period shall not be conducted as a religious exercise but shall be an opportunity for silent prayer or for silent reflection on the anticipated activities of the day."
From my Soap Box, it is interesting that the Legislature can get this done, and have it take action immediately, but they can't funding done for education or public transportation in Chicago...But I guess that's another couple of stories.
The issue here is does the new Illinois law pass constitutional muster?
Stare Decisis, "let the decision stand," is the practice of basing new rulings on previous Court precedent. It is this continuity and consistency, which has served our Court and its legitimacy for over two centuries. Deviating too far from precedent often is received with skepticism.
With the two clauses of our First Amendment Freedom of Religion freedom: free exercise and establishment in play, the precedent setting Supreme Court ruling would seem to be the 1985 case of Wallace v. Jaffree http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/court/wall_v_jaff.html, in which the Court decided that an Alabama law requiring that each school day begin with a moment of “silent meditation or voluntary prayer” was unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1962, in Engel v. Vitale, that official organization, sponsorship, or endorsement of school prayer is forbidden by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is the was the first judicial review of the establishement clause public schools.
It is not uncommon for many laws to be practiced in this country even if they are possibly (or probably unconstitutional). They would have to be challenged and reviewed judicially. It is also probable (again from my soap box) that the Legislature -- especially in how it it deals (or doesn't) with education in Illinois (48th out of 50 in state funding), is out of touch.
This comment from a suburban kindergarten teacher:
"I am a kindergarten teacher in a suburban school district. I am with my students for 2.5 hours per day. Here is a list of some of the things (besides the usual curriculum of math, reading, science, and social studies) that I am mandated by the Illinois School Code to teach:
- Holocaust history
- Women's History
- African American History
- Christa McAuliffe Day
- Remembrance Day - Pearl Harbor
- Veterans Day
- Casimir Pulaski Day
- Columbus Day
- Vietnam Veterans Day
- Recycling Day
- Leif Erickson Day
... and the list goes on from here.
If my district even decides (by the state law, they would have no choice) on one minute of silence per day, this will be 180 minutes per year or three hours that I could be spending teaching my students how to read."
In silence or not, blog your constitutional analyisis on the new Illinois law.
14 comments:
This law is absolutely idiotic, to say nothing of unconstitutional. If a student wants to pray in school, that is perfectly fine, but every school in the state should not be required to curtail their already tightly scheduled lessons to provide time to do so. Because there are so many students in Illinois' public schools, this law is simply unenforceable. If a student wants to pray, he can do it on his or her own time.
As to this law's constitutionality, or lack threreof, the First Amendment clearly states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This includes people who do not feel they should worship any particular religion. By forcing everyone to observe a moment of silence every single day, the Illinois General Assembly is violating our constitutional rights. Besides, the U.S. Supreme Court separated church and state decades ago, so the IGA is violating this ruling as well.
The Regional Transit Authority is a mess, the State of Illinois is billions of dollars in debt, Illinois is consistently at the bottom of state rankings in one term or another, and the best the General Assembly can do is force everyone into a moment of silence for no particluar reason? The IGA should devote its time to more pressing needs, and in the not-so-great State of Illinois, there are plenty.
i'm not sure about how i feel about this law. is it necessary? doesn't the legislature have anything better to do than address this law? i feel as if they're trying to avoid more important matters.
how will they even make sure that this one minute is observed?
The idea that this law wastes valuable classroom time is absurd. Yes, the law does take up space that could and should be devoted to curricular activities. But the fact of the matter is that we waste time like that in every class every day. It is extremely rare to have a class period where we are engaged in productive academic activities 100% of the time. As students if we really care about "wasting time" and taking away from our pursuits in academia, we ought to eliminate all tangential discussions, all side-bar conversations, and all packing up 5 minutes before the bell rings. And in regards to that comment by the Kindergarten teacher, maybe it's more important to teach kids the value of a moment spent in silence than it is to teach them about a day dedicated to the remembrance of the exploits of the late great Leif Erikson.
It is sad that we've spent time in Congress focusing on such pointless laws. Although one minute may seem insignificant, the fact that such a part of the day is required, with no educational benefit whatsoever (and for purposes of stress, how is one minute going to make a difference? If a student is unable to find their own time of personal reflection, they are in a more dire time-managing situation than one minute in class can solve).
As for Leif Erikson Day, I was thoroughly disappointed in the lack of recognition of the achievements of one of the first Europeans to set foot on the New World. As a Nordic-American, I feel my day pride has been trampled on by the diabolic scheduling of our school!
I think that this law is rather silly. Taking one minute of the day in silence will have little or no bearing on the learning environment for students, positive or negative. First, a minute is not that much. A bathroom break takes more than a minute. It probably takes a minute or so to hand something out to the whole class. My point is that it's not a big deal in terms of taking away from education.
When it comes to constitutionality, the lawmakers seem to be very careful in not making this religious. So in that sense, I don't think it is infringing on my rights. It is just another one of the silly laws that we have. But it is a tad distressing that this seems to be a higher priority than the budget.
Tuesday the school ended up making the moment of silence 15 seconds during advisory. I don't know about your advisories, but my advisory completely ignored it, so I don't think that it will change how anything is done. This reillustrates the point that, ignoring the fact that the law was already declared unconstitutional in Virginia in 1985 in the case of Wallace v. Jaffree, it won't be strictly enforced by the schools, teachers, or authoritative figures. Unless the law goes to court, everyone will just end up completely forgetting about it eventually.
I do not plan to support this law. Not because there is anything inherently wrong with it, but simply because it is so ridiculous that the state legislature spends time debating and making motions on this BS rather than focusing on problems facing the state. I plan to break this law every day possible, the state should focus on more important matters; if the world was perfect then such trivial laws might be required to keep the government employed, but the world (beggining with this state) is far from perfect.
This law is nonsense and clearly unnecessary. Students can find their own time to say a little prayer to themselves or just have a moment of silence. It’s like talking about whether the Pledge of Allegiance should have the words “under God” in it. It doesn’t really matter because by the time you realize what’s in the Pledge of Allegiance, you don’t have to say it anymore.
One thing I didn’t know but I just learned through this blog is some of the things that *kindergarten* teachers are mandated to teach. This topic should be a blog in itself. Of all the special days listed, the one thing that can be appreciated by kindergarteners is Recycling Day. These other things like Christa McAuliffe Day, Casimir Pulaski Day, and Leif Erickson Day aren’t anything that should really be taught to kindergarteners. Christa McAuliffe, for those of you who don’t know but probably many of you do, was the teacher that was in the Space Shuttle Challenger when it blew up in midair in 1986. In my mind, this can only end badly when it is being taught to 6 year olds. Here’s how it plays out in my mind:
Teacher: “How many of you know who Christa McAuliffe was? She was a teacher who a long time ago went up in a space shuttle. Unfortunately, she died when the shuttle blew up.” Tormenting children with a story like this is counterproductive.
Bureaucrats making up special days for school kids?—It’s asinine. The kindergarteners have more sense.
Sorry if I went off topic a little.
I believe this law is not only unconstitutional but extremely impractical. Just because the state sets aside a specific time for "silence", they can never make the students use that silence the way that they envision. Truly...by instituting such a law they would just be creating a time that students would utilize for sleep, finishing homework, or incite anger among students who believe that it is a complete waste of time. Separation of church and state was established years ago and the first amendment protects the people from being subjected to any sort of establisehd religion. People are allowed to pray in school on their own terms--the state cannot waste money and time on such a bill that will have no positive consequences. What are you going to do...arrest a student who doesn't want to pray in school?
No one has to pray if they don't want to. And like Jeremy said, we're far from efficient throughout the day. And rebelling against the law just for the sake of rebelling is as impractical as the law itself. The lawmakers don't care, and it just aggravates our teachers, who - as far as I can tell - think the law is just as ridiculous as we do.
Our school's version of obeying this law doesn't even last for 15 seconds. Instead of griping, why not get some homework out or put your head down? If you really object, get a petition going or something. Petty grumbling doesn't help anything.
I was talking to someone in my advisory and there seems to be a lot of misconceptions of this law. The major one is that this is forcing religion into school. It's a moment of silence, if you to sit there listlessly or if you want to pray or reflect it's up to you. Nothing else. There's been so many things going on, or has gone on: the war, 9-11. I dont' see the harm in it. It's like the pledge of allegiance where we are "forced" to say it everyday. We can argue that the pledge similarly upsets the learning process. But we still do it. As for our school, it's 15 secs in ADVISORY, where we don't do anything anyways.
I have mixed feelings about this law. First, I do not like being "forced" to have a moment of silence that serves no real purpose in my life. On the other hand, it is only a few seconds and it is during advisory, which isn't even a class, so it really doesn't interrupt our learning or waste valuable time. I guess the value of the moment of silence depends on how you choose to use it.
Many ideas on the constitutionality of this moment of silence is pretty well-established: everyone feels it's unconstitutional. So do I, however its constitutionality does not interest me as much as the purpose it bears and the intention of the lawmakers.
What really is the purpose of this activity, this law....this establishment?? The stated purpose is to give students time of reflection and prayer, and I guess the lawmakers supposed such reflection and prayer would refresh our minds and provide energy and enthusiasm for the rest of our tiring day. This might be true when such silent reflection is done voluntarily, out of our own desire to begin the day with a peaceful gathering in our minds. Now with this funny law passed, students are showing bitterer cynicism, rejection, and indifference. Hardly anyone participates in this legal activity, and almost everyone criticizes the law. It seems like the law and the lawmakers are producing counter-effects that totally defeats the purpose of the law itself.
I actually laughed out loud when I read the part about how this law breaches past precedent. Past precedent is pretty much everything. Even with just the attorney experience that Youth & Government can offer I know how very, very obvious it should be to a judge that this law is unconstitutional given that fact. (I agree with Vivi - petty grumbling doesn't get you anywhere. I can't wait to see this go to court.)
Personally I'm not all that offended by this law (mostly just because no one takes it seriously - if there were people praying around me in advisory then I might feel hurt). I think it's a waste of time - both for the students to follow it (yeah I know, school is far from efficient, but that doesn't mean we have to make it less efficient) and for the legislators to spend the time getting it passed. Not to mention it is virtually unenforceable. I know a few people in Illinois whose schools don't follow it. Also I think it's stupid to allow time for prayer in school. Public school is a government institution. There is absolutely no need to make room for religion in government institutions. After all, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Not giving time for prayer in school is DEFINITELY NOT prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Making a law that allows for religion to be practiced in school DEFINITELY IS making a law respecting an establishment of religion. Sure it's not forcing you to pray, but it's giving you a scheduled time in which you may pray...still a law respecting an establishment of religion.
Also, school is an environment where everyone should feel comfortable. If a law makes school an uncomfortable environment for some students, then I think that law should be gotten rid of.
If you want to pray during school, you can do it. There does not need to be an established one minute (or 10 seconds, WVHS style) that, IF ACTUALLY FOLLOWED (and should all laws be considered assuming that they will actually be followed?), would make at least a few people feel uneasy, alienated.
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