School’s out. In the past nine months, a Santa Fe, Tex., student and the Texas attorney general went head-to-head over student-led prayer at a football game and graduation ceremony; an eighth grader carried guns to class after being tormented by bullies; and three high-school students were arrested for anti-Semitic, terroristic acts against a 13-year-old. It’s time for the Santa Fe school hoard to learn some new lessons.

Let’s get our priorities straight School prayer, a child’s errant solution to harassment and a Jewish student being given a death threat have a direct correlation If prayer is being promoted in school, no doubt the school board and teachers condone a rift between students who "believe" and those who don’t, giving them more reason to hate and distrust one another. This great gulf will continue to grow exponentially if fear and ignorance are ignored and people in authority look the other way instead of turning the other cheek.

Santa Fe is a Galveston County town, 20 minutes from Houston. Although the school superintendent, some board members and many of its 9800 residents fight to keep prayer in school-sponsored events, they may find themselves lost, without a prayer. The big picture is not whether the courts will allow students to lead each other in religious supplication at such gatherings, but whether these same students continue to learn bigotry racism and anti-Semitism in their homes AND practice such beliefs without condemnation.

Hello... is anybody listening? Those who wish to save Santa Fe should facilitate its peaceful residents’ seeking out diversity training from such sources as the Anti-Defamation League’s A World of Difference and Holocaust Museum Houston’s curriculum trunk program, both of which provide teachers and students with training and instruction on cultural diversity. These outreach programs are proven to make a difference, but only when community leaders believe in the possibility of people with differences mutually respecting one another. There is, however, one caveat the instruction will not alter the course of history if parents, living in ignorance or fear, forbid their children to participate.

Hillel, the greatest of the sages of the Second Temple period, is described as a man of great humility. To bring mankind closer to Torah, he scrupulously avoided anger and pedantry. When a heathen came to Hillel for conversion on the condition that the sage teach him the entire Torah "while standing on one foot," Hillel answered: "What is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor this is the entire Law, all the rest is commentary. Now go study!"

This is the lesson for the school board and citizens of Santa Fe, who seem to be living in a house of glass: Prayer is merely one aspect of practicing one’s religion. Until you have learned and modeled the law and commentary of your own religious teachings, all there is to be seen is your own reflection that you are standing on one foot.