Last week in Finance Committee Education Minister Alden McLaughlin reassured the public that prayer has not been taken out of Cayman’s public schools.
‘While prayer is not mandated, my Ministry has contacted each school on this matter and all public schools conduct prayers and devotion at least once and some up to five times a day as well as at additional times during the week,’ he said.
Minister McLaughlin was responding to concerns expressed by opposition member Juliana O’Connor-Connolly during the May budget debate that school prayer had been eliminated from public schools. In her statement, she called for the return of prayer and of corporal punishment to public schools as ways of reversing the social ills affecting the young people of the Cayman Islands.
‘What she said was completely and totally wrong and false,’ said the Minister.
‘There is prayer and devotion at every school.’
The Minister said that the clear evidence of prayer in schools was proof of the commitment of the Cayman Islands schools system to the Christian ethos.
‘We consider prayer to be an essential component of the values and sense of identity with the community our children have,’ he said.
‘I want to set the record absolutely straight on this matter.’
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