34 States Allow for Opening the School Day in Prayer

Millions of public school students can begin their day with an opening prayer in the classroom. Shocking, isn't it? It's called a moment of silence, and thirty-four states allow it (and some mandate it).

Gateways to Better Education is now encouraging and equipping students to ACTUALLY PRAY during that moment of silence. We've created a School Prayer Card that students can keep in their pockets or backpacks. During the moment of silence, they can pull out the prayer card and silently pray the prayer. Imagine millions of students silently reading the prayer on our School Prayer Card.

You can download the School Prayer Card for free. CLICK HERE.

Visit our School Prayer Card webpage to find out if YOUR STATE mandates a moment of silence and what to do if your school doesn't observe it. Tell your friends about the School Prayer Card and download the free card today!

Changes to the Federal Guidance on Religious Expression — Should you be concerned?

In 2017, we began lobbying the U.S. Department of Education (USDoE) to update its Guidance on students’ and educators’ freedom of religious expression. We gave them a number of recommendations. To our delight, they used many of our recommendations and in the 2020 release of Constitutionally Protected Prayer and Religious Expression in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools. 

On May 15, 2023 the USDoE released its revisions of the Guidance. Should you be concerned about changes that were made? The short answer is, No.

What has changed in 2023?

For the most part, only slight wording changes were made to the Guidance that do not change the overall meaning. For example, references to the Bible, Torah, and Koran were replaced with “religious materials.” When referring to student prayer, the term “grace” was replaced with “a prayer or blessing.”

Due to the recent Supreme Court victory of our friends at First Liberty Institute, the updated Guidance references the Kennedy v. Bremerton School District ruling allowing educators to pray even if students see it. The Guidance now includes:

“...not everything that a public school teacher, coach, or other official says in the workplace constitutes governmental speech, and schools….may not prohibit those employees from engaging in prayer merely because it is religious or because some observers, including students, might misperceive the school as endorsing that expression.”

However, First Liberty attorney Keisha Russell expressed concern that “the administration’s new guidance relies on old propositions derived from the overturned Lemon   decision.” In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Supreme Court overruled a precedent known as the Lemon test, which unnecessarily restricted religious freedom for over 50 years. She reiterated the importance of following the Court’s recent ruling and making sure that “any restriction placed on religious freedom by those outdated cases is restored to the fullest extent required by the First Amendment.”

The updated Guidance has pared down the section addressing the Equal Access Act allowing students to organize religious clubs. It removed a portion of the 2020 Guidance which stated that student clubs have the right to require club leaders to hold to the clubs’ religious beliefs. While this should be obvious, it is not specifically addressed in the Equal Access Act.  

The 2023 Guidance adds clarity about school choirs performing religious music:

“[P]ublic schools generally may allow student choirs to perform music inspired by or based on religious themes or texts as part of school-sponsored activities and events, provided that the music is not performed as a religious exercise and is not used to promote or favor religion generally, a particular religion, or a religious belief.”

It also adds a sentence encouraging schools to inform students of their religious freedom. It states that public schools may teach about religion “and promote religious liberty and respect for religious views (or lack thereof) of all.”

The World Series and Thanksgiving

Imagine students asking their teacher what the baseball World Series is about. What would you think if, instead of explaining that it is the annual championship series between the top team in the American League and the top team in National League, the teacher taught the students that the World Series is a nostalgic remembrance of the first World Series in 1903.

The teacher tells the students that we celebrate the World Series every year by talking about what happened in that first World Series in 1903 between the Boston Americans and the Pittsburgh Pirates. The teacher explains that we gather with family, eat the hot dogs the baseball players ate, and sometimes even dress up like the old teams.

Sound ridiculous? Too often, unfortunately, that’s what educators do when they teach about Thanksgiving. They teach it as a nostalgic remembrance of what happened 400 years ago.

When I am lecturing at universities in their Schools of Education, I’ll ask the students how many of them were taught, when they were in public schools, that Thanksgiving is a time to remember how the Pilgrims invited the Indians to a dinner to thank them. And, of course, all the hands go up.

The fact of the matter is, we celebrate Thanksgiving every year because the President of the United States asks the nation to thank God for the blessings we’ve received during the previous year. That’s why it’s an annual event.

George Washington started things off by calling on the nation to “acknowledge the providence [provision] of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.” He never mentioned the Pilgrims.

Until President Lincoln, it was celebrated on different days around the country. He wanted to promote national unity and established the day in November for the entire country to celebrate together. No mention of the Pilgrims.

While modern presidents have gotten into the politically correct habit of mentioning the Pilgrims and Native Americans, they also call on the nation to thank God.

In case of Lynch v. Donnelly, the Supreme Court ruled:

“Our history is replete with official references to the value and invocation of Divine guidance in deliberations and pronouncements of the Founding Fathers and contemporary leaders. Beginning in the early colonial period long before Independence, a day of Thanksgiving was celebrated as a religious holiday to give thanks for the bounties of Nature as gifts from God. President Washington and his successors proclaimed Thanksgiving, with all its religious overtones, a day of national celebration and Congress made it a National Holiday more than a century ago. Ch. 167, 16 Stat. 168. That holiday has not lost its theme of expressing thanks for Divine aid any more than has Christmas lost its religious significance. [465 U.S. 668, 676]”

It is perfectly acceptable, in fact it is academically imperative, for public school educators to teach that Thanksgiving is a time when the entire nation gathers, at the request of the President, to thank God for the blessings we have received as a nation and individually. We do it every year because we are to reflect on how God has blessed us in the past twelve months.

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Lesson Plan: Teaching Students about the Presidential Thanksgiving Proclamation

Use the President’s annual Thanksgiving Proclamation to teach about the holiday. Here is website where you can find all the Presidential Proclamation.

Gateways THANKSGIVING CARD for teachers

Bible Verses Related to Academic Topics

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5

To be discerning about what they are learning as they sit in the classroom, students need think biblically.  Every aspect of the world needs to be viewed with the assumption that God is intimately involved with His creation. Children need to see that God exists outside of their Sunday school classroom and beyond the pages of their Bible. He is connected with everything in their lives at school—including the academic subjects they are learning.

Here are some Bible verses that you can have your children write on sticky notes and use as bookmarks in their textbooks.

History

“From one man he made every nation of men that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17:26-27 (NIV)

Language Arts

“The tongue of the wise uses knowledge rightly, but the mouth of fools pours forth foolishness…. A wholesome tongue is a tree of life, but perverseness in it breaks the spirit.” Proverbs 15:2,4 (NIV)

Biology

“For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” Psalm 139:13-14 (NIV)

Physics

“For in him we live and move and have our being…” Acts 17:28 (NIV)

Astronomy

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19:1 (NIV)

Geology or Geography

“The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” Psalm 24:1 (NIV)

Mathematics

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone...?” Job 38:4-6 (NIV)

Teach Your Children Discernment

Children need to see that God exists outside of their Sunday school classroom or youth group and beyond the pages of their Bible. He is connected with everything in their lives at school—including the academic subjects they are learning.

Predict and Pre-teach

Author and Gateways friend Linda Moran explained to me how she prepares her children for what they might learn at school. She calls it “Predict and Pre-teach.” Explain to your children what they may learn at school (predict). Then, before they encounter it, teach them God’s truth on the topic (pre-teach).

We’ve applied this technique with our own children. For example, when our daughter was in first grade, we noticed at a school open house that the children would be reading a book about nature that referred to Mother Earth. Rather than protest the use of the book, we explained to her that she may be reading books that mention Mother Earth (predict), and we talked to her about God being the creator of all things (pre-teach).

We made it the subject of joking (“Can you believe how silly it is that some people think the Earth is our mother?”). We read the Creation Story from the Bible and talked about how beautifully God made the Earth and everything on it.

One day she came home with a big smile on her face. “You won’t believe what we read today in class,” she said. “We read about Mother Earth!” We all had a good laugh. That was years ago, yet she still rolls her eyes when she sees something written about Mother Earth.

You can use this practical way of teaching discernment with any age. For example, parents are rightly concerned with their teenagers being taught evolution as a fact. Using the “Predict and Pre-teach” method you can arm them with the thinking tools they need. Look at their textbooks to find out how the topic will be taught, then provide them with access to helpful websites and books.

Have your children begin every day with this question in mind: “What will Jesus think about what I learn today?” This means applying 2 Corinthians 10:5, “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.” You can help your children think like Jesus while in class by helping them make the connections between their academic studies and God’s Word.