Politicized prayer in school: my will be done.

One morning last March a local principal began prayers over the school P.A. system using the following words: "In our name, and in the name of the Father..."

Adding the phrase `in our name' to the traditional words of the Sign of the Cross is in fashion today among certain groups of Catholics. In fact, those who lead prayers at teacher conferences usually ignore the Sign of the Cross completely, preferring instead lowered heads and occasionally a `let us pray,' a format favoured as being more ecumenical in nature.

Moreover, in some Catholic educational circles, especially in OECTA, the Ontario teachers' union, `Father' is eliminated altogether and replaced by `Creator God,' a term considered less sexist.

And so, although the principal's first words that day were nothing new, his concluding remarks raised at least one set of traditional eyebrows in the school: "And now," he said, "please enjoy God's gift of this special day, the Feast of the Sap Moon."

The Feast of the Sap Moon? This was a little too much for one 1950's, Jesuit-trained staff member, still sore at the school administration for failing to announce the Feast of the Immaculate Conception the previous December 8, and so he queried the office.

Sure enough, within a short time he was sent a Catholic calendar for the month of March listing the `feast' of the Sap Moon, a calendar published by some nuns in the United States. The publication also included spiritual advice for each day of the week. On March 18, for example, readers were urged to "talk to your plants and listen to them too," and on the 30th they were encouraged to "hold a handful of soil...contemplate it...smell it." March 17 simply had the word `Patrick,' sainthood presumably being reserved exclusively for Mother Earth.

For myself, who have taught in Catholic education in Ontario for thirty years, all of this is most depressing, yet neither new nor surprising. For decades, education in Ontario has been nothing if not faddish, with Catholic schools leading the way.

New prayer trend

Lately, however, a new prayer trend, possibly more serious, is appearing at Catholic teacher meetings. Prayer is used to conform teachers, not to the will of the Father, but rather to the will--some say, to the educational whims--of their superiors.

The compliance-through-prayer techniques are varied, but usually have a common pattern. First, a prayer-like atmosphere is established early in the meeting in order to create a receptive and acquiescent teacher audience. Then, safely subdued, the teachers are fed the tenets of progressive education so dear to the hearts of their leaders.

Last year, for example, when `cooperative learning' was the very latest educational fad, some teachers' workshops began, after a bowing of heads and a mumbled `let us pray,' not with prayer at all, but with a recital of The Geese Story by Milton Olson, a tale of how geese must remain `in community' in order to fly safely south.

The prayer-like opening, lowered heads and all, was nothing more than a religious veneer, a tactic employed to peddle a particular educational product.

A more striking example of this attitude arose when one principal decided to introduce a new report card system into his school, one which de-emphasized grades and required about 35 hours of writing anecdotal comments.

On the day his staff were scheduled to begin writing the reports, the principal, conscious of some discomfort in the ranks, assembled all teachers in the library for a preparatory prayer service. Following the Sign of the Cross, he then directed the vice-principal to read aloud what he called The Gift of Question, a reflection they had co-written for the occasion. The style and tone of the piece paralleled the examination of conscience format traditionally used prior to Confession, but now the teachers were being asked to contemplate, not their sins against God, but their `sins' of resistance toward the new report card system.

There were ten `gifts of question,' all followed by a pause for a period of self-examination, each of them structured along the following lines: "Am I doing these report cards with resentment in my heart, or am I going to complete them in a spirit of service and self-surrender?" And, "Do I see this evaluation system only as a chore, or do I recognize a God-given opportunity to model compassion and affirm my students?"

Managers, of course, have the right to manage. What is disturbing is when a principal or a consultant or a superintendent uses the context of prayer to promote his or her personal agenda: a case of "My Will Be Done' as it were, which encompasses the arrogant assumption that his or her personal predilections are also the will of God.

Traditional routines are anathema 

The result of all this is that, in order to remain sinless and guilt-free in the modern educational climate, Catholic teachers must swallow every new learning idea, no matter how half-baked or silly it might be. Traditional teaching habits and routines, even if they are good ones, are now anathema.

One meeting I attended on the Ministry's new `transition years' policy began with the following prayer, which specifically targeted those stifling old methods:

"We thank you, Lord, especially now, for the gift of change, that gift of newness that opens doors closed by habit and routine. Blessed are you, Lord Our God, who gives the gift of change."

Of course, the compliance-through-prayer strategy has been used in schools for political as well as educational ends. On May 1, 1995, just before staff members throughout our region were handed the NDP government's Employment Equity Workforce Survey to complete, they were first read an Employment Equity Prayer and Reflection composed specially for the occasion by the chaplain of a local high school. The 200-word reflection consisted more or less of NDP policy reworked into religious terminology, while the prayer expressed the hope that none of us would ever be "an obstacle to the dignity and fulfilment" of the four government-designated employment equity groups.

Although employees were compelled by law only to receive and return the survey, 98% of the assembled teachers complied fully with the optional request to give personal details relating to their gender, ethnicity, and, where applicable, physical disability.

In this way, prayer became a tool to harness our natural disgust for racial discrimination, and turn it into an endorsement of employment equity legislation, the NDP's questionable political solution to a difficult problem (Editor: since scuttled by Ontario's new government).

For those of us who had worked for years against NDP abortion policy, and who had yet to hear a word, let alone a prayer, uttered by the teaching community on behalf of the unborn, it was all a little hard to take.

Fortunately, though, most of the new prayer trends are occurring at management and union level, and the good news is that traditional prayer is still taught and encouraged by individual teachers in the classroom.

In my own school last May, for example, I witnessed a young grade 2 teacher kneeling on the carpeted classroom floor with her pupils. There were beads clutched in every tiny hand as they said the Rosary together.

It was a prayer scene simple and pure; a raising up of the mind and heart to God, and centred on the words of the Son to the Father: Thy Will Be Done.

Perhaps management and union leaders alike could take note.