With a new school year beginning, we are likely once again, to see many questions about prayer in public school raised. This one, asked by a listener who heard me on NPR, struck me as particularly worthy of sharing.

Hello Rabbi Hirschfield,
I just heard you on Chicago Public Radio. Thank you so much for your words of wisdom and openness. I definitely will be getting your book! I was wondering what your whole take on the case of keeping moments of silence or reflection out of the schools – something that can be practiced by a kid of any religion or no religion. But some say it’s a slippery slope where teachers may innocently talk about their own religion if a child asks what it means to reflect.
Even though my siblings and cousins were all raised Hindu, we still exchanged x-mas gifts with our family, had a Christmas tree, sang carols around the neighborhood! We enjoyed the good cheer and charity that the Christmas spirit was about and I never thought of myself as Christian practicing these traditions. I guess it’s all a slippery slope and we can’t possibly have every religion represented in the school programs, right?
Thank you!

Dear A,
First, in principle I long for a time when spiritual development is part of public education. I believe that without it, we mis-serve our youth. Second, for a moment of silence to work in that direction, let alone shared prayer to which I would object, we would need to prepare a generation of teachers and school administrators to guide that moment of silence so that it was about spiriutal development and not religious indoctrination. Third, we would need a national conversation on the importance of spiritual growth that was not predicated on a particular faith or some homogenized one-faith-fits-all hodge-podge. And fourth, we would need to nurture that process for a great deal more time than I suspect either those who opposes such moments of silence, or those who welcome them as the first step toward getting our kids to pray “the right way”, could tolerate before jumping to the implementation phase of such moments in to the daily curriculum.

The slippery slope argument doesn’t bother me at all. in fact, WE ALL NEED TO STOP BEING SO AFRAID OF SLIPPERY SLOPES. As I see it, healthy legal and religious systems are meant to equip us to scale the slippery slopes to new heights, not provide us with excuses for avoiding those very slopes. But again, for this to work, we need to share a common understanding of what those heights to which we ascend look like. Will Jesus be sitting there? Will Muhammad? How about Moses or Vishnu?

Could it be that it doesn’t matter? Is it possible that the heights to which we aspire have nothing to do with any of these figures but have everything to do with how will look when our ascent is successful? Will we know that we have achieved a level of success based not upon whose teacher is sitting at the next plateau, but based on our own heightened ability to love, nurture, and care for on another? Will success be a generation of students who better appreciate their own worth and dignity? Will they be calmer, more focused and better prepared to face a day of studies because of this moment of silence?
I yearn for a national curriculum that includes in our schools, the spiritual reelection about which you ask. But before that is possible, a nation of parents and educators must address these and related questions. I hope that we do, and I think that forums like this help us to do so. So, thanks for your question.