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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Opposes returning prayer to schools

Web posted June 5, 1999

Editor, The Chronicle:

Opposes returning prayer to schools

Many suggestions have been provided for reducing violence in our public schools. I do not believe adding prayer to school activities would help and it could have unintended negative consequences. I believe there are other actions we can pursue that would have a higher probability of long term success.

In Indiana, except for specialevents such as commence-ment, we did not have prayers in our public schools during the 1950s and 1960s. This is the time period many writers hold up as an example of what we need to go back to. My daughter, who graduated from Lakeside High School last year, came home in tears because the young Christian adults who gathered at the flag pole in the morning taunted her and told her she would go to hell because she did not believe the same as they did.

Actions other than enforced prayers that I believe we can take now include:

We can teach ethics (respect for every human being) without teaching religion. Religion is more properly taught at home or at church, temple or mosque.

We can search for ways to help young people connect with each other and the rest of the community. In our new, modern schools it is easy for a young person to feel lost in the large crowd. We had much smaller schools in the 1950s.

We can start teaching inclusion in pre-school and kindergarten. Vivian Paley describes one method of accomplishing this in her book You Can't Say You Can'tPlay. The children's thoughts and experiences in implementing this rule are quite interesting and insightful.

We can encourage more free play in elementary school and after school. At school we seem to limit free play due to fear of lawsuits and insurance claims (someone might fall down and hurt themselves). After school we seem to push organized play such as Little League, youth soccer and, during the summer, computer camp, football camp, etc.

Research has shown that free play is a meta language that binds us together. As Fred Donaldson, a play specialist, has pointed out in his article, ``Belonging: That Bargain Struck in Child's Play,'' play is a fantastic healer of mind, body and spirit for people of all ages.

Mary Hengstebeck, Evans