I spent 12 years in Catholic schools and we did not spend 6 hours a day God-focused, nor did we pray constantly.
Even in religious schools, regardless of the denomination, there is the understanding that beyond the openning prayer at the beginning of class religious teaching remains in religion class.
Why do you choose to ignore the fact that God is mentioned in my child's school? Is it because that defeats the purpose of your arguement that all public schools are godless dens of evil?
And? What do you conclude from this?
This is one reason why we are homeschooling and not sending our children to parochial schools. The curriculum that we use is suffused with Catholic doctrine. We don't teach our children to compartamentalize religious life by relegating God to "religion class."
Why do you choose to ignore the fact that God is mentioned in my child's school?
Because I figured you wouldn't "get" my answer. You sound like a Catholic who's comfortable with the compartamentalization of religion. In other words, your schooling "worked."
Your argument is a very weak argument. Some prayer is better than no prayer, but an opening prayer to God doesn't compare to a curriculum that is suffused with Catholic doctrine. All subjects are ordered to God as their final end.
It also seems to me that you know little about the origins of public schooling in the United States, which was explicitly anti-Catholic.
Why do you suppose we have a parochial school system in America? This image may provide a clue.
The school system that Horace Mann brought to America was inspired by the totalitarian Prussian system (where we get "kindergarten"). Horace Mann was a Unitarian and a utopian, who sought to wrest control of education from parents. His plan for compulsory schooling was picked up on by American Protestants, who saw in it a way to force the children of the new Irish Catholic immigrants into non-denominational Protestant schools.
The American bishops reacted by creating their own system of schools (sadly patterned after Mann's Prussian schools) in order to thwart this attack on Catholic families.
In reaction, many states passed laws (Blaine Amendments) forbidding aid to "private" (i.e., Catholic) schools, thus making it more difficult for poor Catholic immigrants to provide a Catholic education for their children.
The American Nativist movement and its hostility to Catholic immigrants at this time can't be overstated. It continued into the '20s, which saw the landmark case of Pierce vs. Society of Sisters.
The fundamental case came in the 1920s, Pierce vs. the Society of Sisters. An initiative backed by the Ku Klux Klan and approved by Oregon voters on November 7, 1922 would have required all schoolchildren in that state to attend public schools beginning in 1926. The issue was promptly taken to court by the Society of Sisters and the Hill Military Academy. In 1925, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law.Of course, anti-Catholicism persists to this day. And Mann's system has worked probably beyond his own wild imaginings. Few people can imagine a different system.“The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only,” ruled the Court. “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”
The Court thus made it clear the government has no right to compel children to attend a public school as long as they are otherwise being educated, whether in a religious or secular nonpublic school, by tutors, through home schooling, or by some other means. For those who are concerned about schools being started by witches or fanatics, the Court also said the government had the right to reasonably regulate nonpublic schools and limit anything inimical to the public interest.