Classroom Prayer Should Be Banned in US Schools

Within this round, I will first give my rebuttals to all my opponent's arguments and then present my own.____________________________________________________________________________________________________________His two points seemed to be that prayer is impossible to limit within the classroom under his definition and that it is an infringement of rights. I will address each of these points individually:1. Impossible to Limit My opponent used the idea that it is impossible to limit prayer in classroom time under two examples, those being silent mental prayer and Muslim prayer. First, I will concede that Muslim prayer does occur 5 times a day. There are two unspoken fallacies, however, within his argument. While there are 5 prayer times, only Dhuhr and Asr occur within US public school time. Dhuhr occurs during lunchtime (which is irrelevant to this debate under my definition) and Asr nearly at the end of the US school time, even in districts in which the times have been pushed back. At this point, students are out of class and either in the hallway or on the bus/walking. Next, if anyone feels a strong enough need to pray during class time, there is no rule that bans private religious schools or homeschooling. Respectfully, I suggest my opponent do further research on this topic.His second example is silent mental prayer. I would like to point out that his only source is a comment within this debate that was essentially a question. Yes, I have read this comment, and I will answer it here. My definition is religious demonstration within the classroom, of which thinking does not apply. Next, even if that weren't true, as I will go on to discuss. even clasping your hands and praying silently during US public school class time is against the constitution and is discriminatory. I do not support spending the education on physical and mental mind reading (and on a separate note, what is the difference? Isn't it just mind reading?). 2. Infringes upon Rights I will go on to discuss why prayer within classrooms actually infringes upon rights far more than a restriction later in this round. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________Now, I would like to go on to present my arguments. 1. Prayer distracts from learning. All students require the right to full education. The constitution decrees “equal educational opportunity no matter what their race, ethnic background, religion, or sex, or whether they are rich or poor, citizen or noncitizen.” Distracting students from school for religious activities is both unconstitutional, and unfair to those non-religious students who come to learn, not to pray. The Florida Times-Union notes, “Beyond the clear issues of separation of church and state rests this practical one: Don’t distract students trying to learn.” Time in schools is to be spent on learning, not on individual children practicing their individual religions. 2. Prayer incites hate speech While it seems like a surprising claim, it is proven to be true. The Westboro Baptist Church and KKK are two among over 750 religious hate groups in the US, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Under the acceptance of prayer in schools, we allow these groups to issue racial, sexist, anti-semitist, and heterosexism slurs with no control mechanism under the guise of protection by the Constitution. According to the Journal of Experimental Sociology, it is demonstrated that overhearing a racist slur causes the listener to evaluate members of the slurred group more harshly in the future. We thus cannot allow prayer in schools. 3. Prayer is anti-Constitutional (For this argument all evidence comes from the Constitution unless I say otherwise) The Establishment Clause bans the establishment of religion by the government, especially within schools. By establishing allowed prayer in schools, we establish religion, and thus defy the constitution. The separation of church and state describes full separation between government and religion. I think everyone can at least agree that an ideal US government should not have any links to any religion (and whether or not it does is a separate debate). Under the above logic, we no longer have this connection if citizens who are looking for public school under the laws of the Constitution (meaning without established religion) are forced to watch and be detracted by children clasping their hands and audibly praying (or even silently) because we discriminate against those who choose to remain without religion. We may even embarrass those who are the only out of many that does pray, or pray to a certain God or within a certain religion as opposed to the many who celebrate a different one. We can't discriminate against those belonging to religion, and this is a simple reason to vote for no prayer in public schools.Thank you very much. I look forward to reading my opponent's response.