Drive-by shootings, street crime, frustrated or fired workers doing mayhem on the job. Domestic violence – adults killing their spouses, parents killing their children, kids killing kids. Deadbeat dads hunted down like the FBI's most wanted.

We desperately need some stability, and those who have found it in their religion quite naturally want to extend that to the public arena, to our public schools.

But they forget one very important thing. Like it or not, publicly endorsed school prayer is a violation of the very foundation of this country, and changing the Constitution won't change that.

Remember why the pilgrims came to these shores? If you don't remember, or were never taught, you are Exhibit A. Because that void, not school prayer, is at the heart of the problem.

Despite what many different churches teach, various religions do not each have a monopoly on morality. I watch the religious wars in other parts of the world – Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Pakistan – and I cringe at the very real possibility of a religious war in this country over school prayer.

It will be an ugly war fought in the name of righteousness. And it will be fought by people who do not understand that in this country inalienable rights are not, and must not be, subject to majority rule.

A local talk show took up the issue last winter. The guest, a former gubernatorial candidate, said a school prayer amendment would be just dandy. The host asked him what would happen when the devil worshipers came into school and insisted on equal time.

''We wouldn't let that happen,'' the guest said.

Oh?

If the real goal of school prayer is to get back a public morality that many feel we once had, we don't need prayer in school to do it. Because, you see, prayer is not the only thing missing from many schools these days.

The past 20 or 30 years have been tumultuous. In the midst of a cynicism over Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, riots in the cities, it became hard to teach this country's great founding principles. The contradictions kept getting in the way.

But just as we don't toss out the Ten Commandments because people keep violating them, we should not have shoved to the back shelf the wonder contained in our Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, and our Constitution.

Collectively those documents form a creed, a public morality if you will, that transcends all religions, and excludes none.

Public schools need to recognize once again that it is their duty to teach our young citizens the principles upon which this great country was founded. We need to explain our nation's values to our children, clearly, repeatedly, and in so many words.

That's silly, you say. No one could possibly grow up in America in this day and age and not absorb that information, even if it's no longer a separate subject taught in school.
You sound like I did, not that long ago.

I have two children who were born in the mid-1970s. About 10 years ago, my daughter asked me what Vietnam was all about. Her question brought me up short. Vietnam had been such a huge part of my life. Her father had seen two tours of duty. How could she possibly not know about it? Don't we pass stuff like that on through our genes?

This from a biology major.

We need to stop assuming that, since we know all that stuff, our kids do too. They haven't been getting it by osmosis, and it shows. We need to talk to them about the meaning of life, of the value of liberty, and how to pursue happiness.

We need to teach why freedom of speech is so important, and point to places in the world where people are still being executed or imprisoned for speaking out against their own government.

We need them to understand that we are a nation of laws, why arrest records are public information, and what happens still in Central America and other places when police forceably remove people from their homes, never to be seen again.

We need to teach them about equality – among races, sexes, religions, and yes, sexual orientations – what it looks like in person, and why it is so important.

We need to teach them that in this country, unlike so many others, the people are their government, and how that makes each one of us responsible for what happens.

And we need to teach them about love – all the way from the kind of love that refuses to hate, to the very ultimate of love, shown by those who have literally laid down their lives so that you and I can be free within these borders.

We need to move beyond the Ugly American, skip over the prideful patriot, and teach, in humility, why it is so special to be a citizen of the United States of America.

If our public schools once again taught not prayer, but the guiding principles of our government, both our great nation and all the marvelous diversity of religions inside our borders would be strengthened.

And the beauty is that we don't need a constitutional amendment to do it.

– Bangor Daily News