Religion in Schools

Kathy Ortiz
11/21/07


There are many court cases in which religion is a major problem. Not all students are from the same religion. Different people have different beliefs such as Catholicism, Atheism, and even evolution. I believe that schools shouldn’t talk about any certain of religion or belief in the presence of others, because it can cause conflict. For Example, if a student decides to do a prayer for the whole class there might be students of other religions that are prohibited from praying to any other god than their own god. That will cause conflict for the students, because they have to follow their religion and others might be offended for not praying along. There are many examples in which religion caused problems in schools around the U.S.
In the case of Cole v. Oroville Union High School a student named Chris Niemeyer was graduating from his senior year in high school. He was chosen as covaledictorian in his school and was asked to write a farewell speech. Before every speech is made the school faculty reviews the covaldictorian’s speech before it is made. Niermeyer’s speech contained a lot of religious references to Jesus. Even though the faculty told him to re-write it over and take out the Jesus references he still said the original speech at the graduation. This brought a lot of major conflict, because not everyone at the graduation believed in Jesus.