In the wake of the recent fatal school shootings in places like Oregon and Arkansas, there have been suggestions of implementing prayer, or at least some spiritual or moral program, in schools. Prayer is a way of expressing internal feelings for one person, it's a way of conversing with a deity for another. And for one person, one type of prayer is offensive to the other. And in some cases, prayer is more ritualistic, a ritual rite. For another person, it's more just an expression of your soul.
Prayer is a personal issue.
I believe in, deeply, the value of prayer, in my personal life and even my professional life, but as far as anything that would go on in the school system, it's going to be more informal and collected around kids of common ground, common faith, common beliefs, something of a voluntary nature. Obviously, one of the factors of our academic program has to be centered around making sure that our academic programs are realistic, or that they're real life. Providing a curriculum that is challenging to all the needs is, by far, one of the greatest challenges that any teacher has. That's just a tremendous, tremendous challenge for a classroom teacher. I mean, a lot of our kids are into that, and it's primarily because of the focus of the home, and I think we could support that better, by having some sort of community service component.