God, sleep, teen fantasies can fill schools' moment of silence
Adults suggest a new law that went into effect Friday mandating a brief period of silence in schools is all about religion. Some no doubt secretly hope, and others openly fear, that mandatory silence will force kids to become obedient Christians.
Kids know better.
Give a teenage boy 60 seconds of classroom silence, and chances are he won't spend it praying -- at least not in the traditional sense.
While reports that males think about sex every 7 seconds or even every hour must be exaggerated, some "Superbad" high school boys no doubt will spend their silent moments fantasizing about girls. Some girls will spend it fantasizing about boys. A few kids will fantasize about classmates of the same gender.
Given a mandatory moment of contemplation, students can spend it applying lip gloss, trying to sneak out a quick text message, wondering why the class forgot to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or listening to the demons in their heads.
Having gone to school in the 1970s, when classmate Sara's miniskirts weren't even long enough to reach her chair seat, boys in Mrs. Funk's Latin class found it difficult to think of anything but Sara even when Mrs. Funk actually was yelling at us in Latin. Giving us free time to ponder life wouldn't have been a good thing.
Other studies show that teenagers are so sleep-deprived, they'll use the moment of silence (or a teacher's lecture) to catch a few Z's.
Even if kids truly do use that moment for prayer, what will the result be? Many students who went to public schools in the early 1960s started each day with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag and had prayer in the classroom -- and that generation is famous for sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, a decline in church attendance, and a propensity to burn draft cards, bras and flags.
Even in religious schools that require kids to pray, a few might master the ability to say the words while thinking about other things.
Illinois' new law is so vague as to be worthless. It does not define a time requirement for the brief moment of silence; meaning it could last less than a second or as long as the infamous hangovers of one of my old high school teachers.
In the crush of a school morning, some teachers might forget the new law or blow off the law intentionally. Others, perhaps unable to cope with the din of 28 grade-schoolers learning, might stretch the moment into most of a class period.
"This is merely another political hammer that the legislature does without any real significance," reads an e-mail from one high school teacher who didn't observe Friday's moment of silence because he was busy teaching our kids. "Schools continue to be insufficiently, inadequately, inappropriately and inequitably funded; and what do the politicians do? Pass a law for silence. Maybe the irony is sufficient for a laugh."
When it comes to fixing the school funding problems, the Illinois legislature has given us years of silence.