Introduction
If you attended public schools in Hicksville in the 1950s, you probably remember when the school day routine set aside time for prayer. You didn’t have to pray aloud, but if you chose to, the only prayer you could recite was the one written in 1951 by the State Board of Regents. This situation arose because prayer in public school – which had always happened – had become an increasingly contentious issue, and was repeatedly subjected to legal challenges, which often probed the interrelationships of the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
In 1962, a case before the nation’s Supreme Court resulted in a ruling that ended use of the Regents Prayer. I don’t recall that the Court’s reasoning was explained to us at that time by any of my teachers, but I think I can give you the gist of it. If government cannot make any laws about establishing religion(s), how can it expect to get away with writing its own prayer, and telling students that they can pray out loud – but only if they recite the prayer the government wrote?
There’s a little more to it, of course, like protecting kids who wanted to silently pray the prayers of their own religions, but had to listen to the other kids reciting the so-called Regents Prayer. So, in light of the Court’s decision, in 1962 the State had to pivot, and it did. It forbade praying aloud, but it permitted local school boards to instead offer a brief silence for meditation.
I don’t have a clear memory of the transition. I recall neither my last pre-ban recitation of the State’s prayer, nor the first silent meditation. I do, however, recall the morning of May 15, 1964, on which – together some other students in my Homeroom, and students in many other Homerooms – I recited the Regents Prayer aloud rather than meditating. Those of us who did so had somehow been convinced that such a protest would serve a purpose, but by now I’m fairly certain that it did not. I’m also fairly certain that our words unintentionally gave Hicksville High the distinction of being the last public school in New York State in which students recited the Regents Prayer as part of the school’s daily school routine – albeit illegally, as doing that had been banned long before.
