I concur with what you just said. I was actually having a discussion with a rather religious friend of mine the other day about Prayer in school particularly because she's in school for Elementry Ed.

In all schools that I have attended (excluding college of course) there has been a moment of silence before or after the pledge. This is obviously the last step before actual prayer in school. My friend's opinion was that organize prayer should not be halted but no one should be forced into anything. With that I asked if time should then be alloted for Muslims to do their daily prayers and her answer was that yes, it should be allowed, but maybe not halt everyone's learning for it. I could accept this because at least she was allowing for the 'equal opportunty', even if I disagree generally. 

Perhaps my biggest problem with the concept of organized religion isn't that I'm afraid of people being forced into doing omething they don't want to, but its actually the higher likely hood of feeling of exclusion of children who arn't raised to pray (athiest, another religion, etc). And so these children (particularly in younger grades) would be outcasts and possibly mocked much in the same way kids will torture others by calling them "gay" and such. Silly things to some,  but it would be another thing that would socially seperate children of 'faith' and children of 'other/no faith'. This almost more than 'indoctrination' is what concerns me. 

 Hopefully the above made sense.. I'm a little tired. But in short, I'm more concerned with how something like this might exclude some children and create more social problems then religious ones!

Let's begin hitting children!

I was under the impression that secular had a different meaning than some Christians attribute to it.  Perhaps the concept of secular is difficult to understan or is simply inconvenient to 'spreading to word'.  Whatever it is, secular is the public school system and secular it should be.

I would very much like to have the lyrics of O Canada changed, but as I can barely recall them in total and I am reasonably sure that most Canadians take them as seriously as they take... well it's hard to be clever there.  There's no stereotypical Canadian 'thing' that fits.  Well, still, I'm sure the lyrics aren't taken seriously, but I'd like to have them changed anyhow.  They're much more recent than the 'Under God' America has.  Actually, the Oath of Allegiance in Canada mentions something about God in it (I just looked it up, having never seen it before).  I'd like to change that and the bit about the Queen, though that's not a topic for this forum.

Anyhow, pooh on prayer in public school and on mention of God within a pledge (or oath) in a secular country.

The one thing I did do at my school was get rid of the daily 'moment of silence'. It was absolute rubbish and did nothing but take 3 minutes out of the shortest period of the day.

The way I did it was pretty funny too. Everytime the moment of silence happened I would get up and dance silently. I told them that it was my way of meditative prayer. When I was told not to do it any more I went to my dad who called up the school and threatened to pull me out (this is a big thing for a school that's under budget... especially when military students bring in bookoo cash) unless they allowed equality. Two weeks later it stopped.

One thing I really wanted to do was to get rid of the 'no pagan jewelry' policy... which was crap. The 'no pagan' policy expanded to the Star of David, any form of bones or fangs, and no black (at all). I didn't know jewish symbols were pagan.

You just won major bonus points with me (which can't be redeemed for prizes, btw). That was awesome!

-Triften