text: Religion in public schools isn't everyone's ideal, but it also isn't anything new. It is protected (within reason) by the law. That makes the current hysteria about Friday prayers particularly hard to digest. I don't recall gangs of masked men showing up to protest me and classmates' attendance at Christian faith group gatherings during lunch hours at my 1990s public school. And to be frank, unlike the Peel kids' observances, the subject matter of our little gatherings often operated well-outside any mainstream cultural norms. I certainly don't imagine any of the Peel kids' modern-day (and teacher vetted) sermons delve into Satanic-rock-music conspiracy theories or promoting wildly regressive sexual politics like my Christian discussion groups did back in the day. Even so, had any masked men attempted to intimidate us from exercising our Constitutionally guaranteed rights, the entire community would have denounced them as mere thugs.