In Idaho on July 1, House Bill 623 will come into effect: the law of 60 seconds of silence. This law may help the school system manage students in multiple ways, but could hinder it as well.
This bill will include a 60-second moment of silence at the beginning of the school day. According to the Idaho Legislature, “During such period, a student may, without interfering with or distracting another student, reflect, mediate, pray, or engage in other silent activity that does not interfere.”
It seems like 60 seconds is only a measly amount of time. However, this type of law gets in the way of community. The start of class time is for a student to catch up with others, and share what they did over the weekend or how home is. When students lose that first connection in the classroom after 60 seconds, and then go immediately to school work, the class feels more separated.
For someone of religious background, this new law might seem like a good thing, and it might as well be. But why not just pray at home in a quiet place? Why does a person need 60 seconds in a public classroom when they can have hours at home to pray?
Those 60 seconds of prayer should be extremely useful to Muslims, as they pray five times a day. But people of the Islamic faith pray before sunrise and at noon, according to Islamic Finder, so those prayers would be finished before school starts. Along with that, the Idaho Office for Refugees says that only 1% of Idahoans are Muslims. That article was published in 2021, but the Muslim population of Idaho has hardly changed, gaining numbers to only 1.38%. So, this bill was not passed for the Muslim people.
It is good to reflect and meditate; it helps a person think about the day, and furthermore, the week. During this quiet time, a student also gets freedom from teachers, as they are not allowed to instruct how one uses this time. So as individuality sets in, what if a student starts to talk out loud? How are teachers equipped to handle that? Reporters from Idaho Ed News gathered educators’ opinions for a March 25 story, including Brian Coffey, president of the Nampa Education Association.
“Who’s going to monitor . . . and are we going to suspend kids who continually
interrupt the moment of silence?” Coffey asked. “Like, what are you going to do
about it?”
What can be done to students to stop talking during this time? The teacher can’t send them out into the hall because they will be likely to just walk around and disrupt other classes. Plus, suspending someone for a day because they were talking for 60 seconds would be ridiculous. Furthermore, where will the teachers send students who keep interrupting, especially if everybody is having 60 seconds of silence at the same moment?
What’s confusing about this bill is that it calls for 60 seconds to reflect and meditate, as well as to pray. Why even mention prayer in the bill? Do the words “mediate” and “reflect” not imply that a person has freedom for 60 seconds?
It’s starting to seem as if the Idaho Legislature is taking baby steps toward putting religion in the public education system. It is fully okay to be religious, and many public schools offer religious clubs and activities outside of class. However, the public education system is here to help students find something they would love to do in the future. Even if a public school student wants to become a pastor for a local church, to force a religion on someone would go against the
Constitution of the United States. America wasn’t built on religion. It was created for the freedom of the individual.
