First of all let me introduce myself my name is Lynn, I am a 30 year old college student. I am majoring in Education and hope to be an elementary school teacher. I am by no means a professional writer. This is the first blog I have ever done so please bare with me because I am just learning.
Majoring in education you must know I love children. I don't have any of my own for matters I wish not to discuss. I do have 2 nieces ages 5 and 10. I have a nephew who is 4. I am very close too.
So when I woke up last Friday morning and heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook I was extremely upset. The first thing I did was pull out my phone and call my sister just to speak with my nieces and nephew. It was horrifying to hear that someone could do a horrible thing. Then as the day unfolded and I was glued to the media news outlets more and more horrifying details. I like most other people in America thought wow that could have been my niece, nephew or child.
I have a Facebook account so when I log on the first thing I see is a picture of "God" and the caption said "Why did this happen" and God replies "Because I am not allowed in schools". I found this very offensive. First of all let me say that I am a Christian, I believe in God. I do not judge anyone who has different beliefs than I do. So I am not pushing Christianity by any means. The way I interpreted this picture was that God was punishing us by allowing this to happen because we don't allow prayer in school. The God that I believe in is not a vengeful God. He would not allow this to happen just because religion is not allowed in public schools.
I choose to believe that God is in your heart no matter where you are physically. I choose to believe that God was with each and every child that morning and that before those gun shots rang out he had taken all of those children home spiritually that the only thing left was their shell of a body. That is how I cope with the bad things happening.
As a Christian I believe when something like this happens it does shake your faith. That being said I don't think prayer should be allowed in school for various reasons. First of all not all religions are the same. There are many different religions, It would be impossible to cover all the different religions. I believe that religion and spiritually learning should come from the parent or church that the family attends. As educators we are not qualified to teach children about religion. That is just the way I feel. Please feel free to comment or give tips. Like I said I am new at this so any help would be great.
Mon Dec 24, 2012 at 4:45 PM PT: I would like to apologize for my grammar. I received an email from a reader who pointed out some of the mistakes that I made with this entry. I am very grateful for the help that I have been receiving from everyone.