So Virginia's law mandating a minute of silence in public

schools has apparently passed U.S. Supreme Court muster. More accurately,

the high court greeted efforts to repeal the statute with silence of its

own, by refusing to hear the case.

The issue has been surrounded with the usual mumbo-jumbo

about how civil liberties are threatened and students who may not believe

in God could be permanently damaged by having to sit still next to someone

who does for 60 seconds.

schools is not illegal and never has been. To paraphrase one of the most

cliched bumper stickers on American highways, look around next time a

teacher passes a math test around the room and see if prayer is not still

in vogue.

In today's society, which has done nothing if not strive

to be as neutral and watered down as possible with regard to religious

matters, a moment of silence seems like a perfect fit. Take 60 seconds

and pray, or not, whatever you like. No one's going to hear you that's

why they call it "silence."

How that puts any student in danger of undue pressure

from other students or anyone else is beyond me. One thing school kids

learn an a very early age is to disguise their behavior in class and get

away with it. If students can pass notes and communicate in other ways

without detection, you'd think they would be smart enough to bow their

heads and pretend to pray, or take a nap, if they didn't want others knowing

their nonbeliefs. (This tactic includes lying, which is something children

have an innate ability for and need absolutely no training in school or

anywhere else.)

Another thought about the concept of a moment of silence

seems contradictory, from my point of view, to most of what is being turned

out by public schools in this country today. Forget about religious connotations

for a minute; try and get a group of students to sit still and be quiet

for any reason.

You can't do it. You might get them quiet if they're

holding the controls to a video game, but that's about it. Getting them

to sit still and think on their own is another thing entirely.

Now, before you fire off that angry e-mail, there are

obvious exceptions to this. I'm not talking about every single young person

at every single school. I'm talking about our bored, drug-addicted (for

every child who truly needs Ritalin, there are ten who don't but take

it anyway), undisciplined masses with 20 years of MTV behind them.

When you hear people going on the offensive against MTV,

they usually talk about it from a moral standpoint. Sure, it has its share

of filth, but so do 50 other cable outlets. What MTV has done to its credit

or its detriment, depending upon your point of view is influence every

form of media, from a style perspective, since it was unveiled in 1981.

Here's an example. Search the TV Land listings and those

of other cable channels and find a rerun of "Hill Street Blues,"

a ground-breaking series that has influenced a great deal of television

drama right up until now. Tape it, then watch it right after seeing an

episode of "ER." You'll have a hard time staying awake.

That has nothing to do with the quality of either show.

It's all about the style. Nearly every scene of every present-day drama,

on television or in movie theaters, is done in such a rapid-fire format

that you rarely see a single scene last more than 45 seconds. And it's

no secret that many of today's hottest directors got their start with

music videos or commercials, all of which are geared to get the message

across in a couple of minutes or less.

So we now have a generation with no attention span. You

could spend several pages addressing other ways in which public schools

are not renowned for turning out models of discipline these days, but

there's not enough space here.

With all of the problems plaguing government-operated

schools in the United States, from kindergarten through college, it's

laughable that there is even a debate over whether it is detrimental to

require students to sit quietly to contemplate their spiritual lives or

just think about that upcoming term paper for 60 seconds.

Let's worry a little more about whether these young people

are going to survive in a position that doesn't include a paper hat, a

name tag or the phrase "Do you want fries with that?"

[Monroe Roark can be reached at [email protected] .]