Prayer and 10 Commandments

Prayer, can students pray?

The opinion persists, that one cannot pray in a public school. That isn't true. A child can pray, if he/she so wishes. The government and their respective public schools and teachers cannot and should not though devise organized prayers for children to recite. It is not in the interest of the state to encourage religious belief. To do so, would violate the rights of the parents of non-Christians and those Christian parents who don't want the government interfering in the religious upbringing of their children.
Although Madelyn Murray O'Hair is used as a scapegoat by many to demonize all that is secular, an honest and objective reading would see that the United States Supreme Court case and similar cases that dealt with the issue of organized school prayer, would show that she was on the right side of this particular issue. This decision stated that the government should be neutral on the question of government involvement in religion and the furthering of religion, that it was wrong for the government to require the reading of the Lord's Prayer and Bible readings in schools.
This case didn't establish atheism, as some state in our schools, but supported the rights of students and their parents who object to the state using their tax dollars to further a religion they didn't believe in. What is freedom of religion, if the government tries to make you a Christian through bible readings? That is freedom?
Madelyn Murray O'Hair wasn't the only parent with a child whose rights were violated; there were countless if not millions of others who were too scared to voice an objection and be labeled communists, unpatriotic and even to maybe be threatened with physical violence.
Has the end of organized/mandated school prayers and bible readings been a positive for America? Well, race relations are improved, segregation is over. Indeed, per capita violent crimes, teen pregnancies and other indicators of social ills are at the lowest levels in 10 or in some cases, 30 years.
James Madison viewed it is imperative to keep religion and state separate, "The Civil government ... functions with complete success ... by the total separation of the Church from the State," in a letter to Gene Garman. I don't think these Founders would object to voluntary prayer in lieu of school organized prayers while keeping the government out of the religion or nonreligion of its citizens.

10 Commandments

I'm wondering how the removal of the Ten Commandments in public courthouse stops people from practicing their religion?
Is something stopping them from putting the Ten Commandments up in churches? Indeed I have been to quite a few churches and rarely see this document on church walls, but people feel it is needed in public buildings? These public buildings are paid for by taxes by Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and atheists along with Christians; are the Christians in Alabama and throughout the United States willing to put documents of other religions in these buildings? When questioned, they usually answer no.
Christians want their religion supported and encouraged in taxpayer-supported buildings but don't want any other religion to have the same right. Is ours a Christian nation? Our founding fathers were dead set against people being forced to support other religions against their will through taxation. The Treaty of Tripoli, ratified in the presidency of John Adams states, "As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion."
We are a religious people (mostly), but we are not a religious government. Any nation that confuses those lines, suffers at great peril.