It’s also a darn shame you missed the entire point of the article. Are you really suggesting we’re better off now in our schools and our society than we were in 1962? If you are, you are completely clueless. If you agree that we’re not, then what do you attribute to the decline? There’s no question, like the article said, that this decline is a moral problem, not a political one. Morality is at the root of every problem we have. And causation of moral problems? Let’s see ... yeah, that might have something to do with rejecting God and doing things our own way.
In 1903 in State of Nebraska v. Scheve (which reads very much like the 1962 and following decisions from the Supreme Court) school prayer and the institutional exercise of religion was banned. In 1962 the Alabama law mandating religious reading was impacted by the Supreme Court (and susequent Supreme Court decisions). So for Nebraska nothing changed and for Alabama your point about the causal link between violence and removal of prayer should hold. Here are the statistics:
1960 Alabama - Violent crime rate 187, In 2011 420 (note the murder rate dropped from 12.4 to 6.3.
1960 Nebraska - Violent crime rate 42, In 2011 253
Note that in Alabama the crime rate went up 2.2x while it went up 6.0x times in Nebraska.
I am not saying we are better off. I am saying that the Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960s has nothing to do with violent crime today (or at least that any claim that it does is not backed by statistical evidence in so many different ways - by state, by country, by year, by status before or after the Supreme Court decision). Causation is a much higher bar to prove than correlation, and no one who claims that the Supreme Court decisions have the 1960s have led to greater violence rates have even proved the correlation (and I have presented evidence that proves no correlation exists). Once you jump over the correlation bar, then we can discuss causation.