Freund Urges Senate Subcommittee To Kill School Prayer Amendment

Paul A. Freund, one of Harvard's most distinguished constitutional lawyers, yesterday strongly urged the rejection of the proposed constitutional amendment that would permit voluntary prayer in public schools.

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, Freund said:

"I cannot help believing that the real problems of moral education, and the opportunities that beckon to meet them, are trivialized and evaded [by the proposed amendment]."

The amendment, recognizing in part recent Supreme Court decisions restricting public authorities from authorizing school prayers, puts all prayer on a voluntary basis. But Freund foresaw the possibility that this would lead to more active participation by church groups in classroom affairs.

Collective Action

"Some form of collective action will a necessary if the pupils are to know what it is that they are to participate in from day to day. It is unrealistic to expect young children to organize this exercise [of prayer] and select or compose prayers without some guidance," he said. "With forced abstention, of the teacher, there is an open invitation for church groups to assume this function."

Freund said that the Supreme Court decision restricting public school prayers did not extend into all areas of public life. For example, he cited prayers in military establishments and in the senate as lying beyond the decisions of the Court.

"What is needed now is not to accept and build upon popular misapprehensions about the scope of the decisions, but to point out the baseless-ness of those fears," to declared.

"There is a feeling, no doubt reflected the resolution [for the amendment], at our public schools must not be goodness Freuad said. Public prayer, he considered, does not respond to this feeling. "A brief ritual of prayer in unison in the Sharon is at beat a seeable and believe a easy way to avoid the real and pressing problems of moral education in the schools."

Instead, he suggested that a short moment of undirected affect meditation would be more appropriate. "If a period of brief prayer is wanted, there is a simple way to have it: a moment of silent meditation, during which each pupil may commune either in prayer or either form of solemn thought, as his upbringing and his spirit may prompt."

Freund did not find evidence to justify a change in the "Bill of Rights, and in particular the First Amendment, for the first time in our history,"

He concluded:

"Is the difference between a moment of prayer in unicorn and a moment of silent prayer or meditation so momentous for public education, and so plainly in the advantage of the vocal ceremony, that the extraordinary machinery of a constitutional amendment should be set in motion to achieve this alternative?