Your editorial argument supporting a legislated moment of silence in the public schools (“The uses of silence in school,” Sept. 6) was pure sophistry. To accept unquestioningly that the motive for the Georgia law was no more than concern for the emotional state of students, to concede that “a few” legislators may have voted for the law from religious conviction and then to imply that the effect of such a law is at worst innocuous, all reflect reasoning that was plainly contrived.
The constitutional concerns that are suggested by such legislation should not simply be dismissed, as they quickly were in your editorial. One concern is the use of this and similar legislation as steppingstones to further intrusion in the classroom on behalf of institutionalized prayer. That would be a constitutional crisis for us all.
