A Prayer Table in a Classroom is like a Chief Digital Officer at a Record

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July 15, 2016 9:47 am by Blaise Alleyne —

A prayer table in a classroom is like a Chief Digital Officer at a record label — a nice way to pretend that you care
when you’re really just shoving something off into a corner.
Legacy organizations sometimes hire someone who gets technology, and maybe even give them a fancy title, but in
reality it’s just a token gesture as they sideline them in a digital silo in which they have no real influence over the
rest of the organization.
I can’t help but think of this empty gesture approach when thinking about religion in schools. There are some ways
in which a religious sense is integrated into the life of the community, but there are also many empty gestures —
ways to put religion “over there” in the corner.
My son, Noah, just finished his first year of kindergarten. At a curriculum night back in the Fall, he was taking us
around his classroom, basically shouting while showing us all of the things — this is where we have these toys, and
this is where we do these activities, and here’s where we learn about words, and here’s the calendar, etc. I see a
strange table with an Ikea leaf canopy thing over it in the corner. “What’s that?” His reply: “Umm… what’s that? I
don’t know…” The one thing in the entire room he can’t identify? The prayer table.
The school board mandates that teachers set up these prayer tables in their class. What’s the point, if it’s going to
be able as effective as hiring some token Chief Digital Officer and placing them off in a silo? Catholic schools
should be doing better with religion than a record company with technology.
http://blaise.ca/blog/2016/07/15/a-prayer-table-in-a-classroom-is-like-a-chief-digital-officer-at-a-record-label/

Used with permission.