When my fourth grade teacher got mad at the class for acting up, her response was to read to us from the Bible so that we would "improve our behavior." Using religious practices to instill virtue was not uncommon in public schools before the early 1960s, when the Supreme Court ruled that requiring prayer in school violated the constitutional separation of church and state.

The most recent Supreme Court decision on prayer and public schools is sparking an outcry, just as the landmark school prayer decision—School District of Abington Township v. Schempp—did in 1963. Growing up in Abington township, I saw first-hand the fury of my community and classmates against the Schempp family, whose son's refusal to say the obligatory school prayer initiated that 1963. The Schempp kids were harrassed, teased and threatened because they tried to follow a different religious pathway than that sanctioned by the majority.

Many see the latest Supreme Court decision as an attack on prayer and religion per se and a sign of our culture's moral decline.

My own history tells me that these fears, based on the idea that public-authorized school prayer is essential for teaching kids moral values, are unfounded. After all, we all know people who pray in public but do not behave well in private, and there are lots of people who behave well, but pray only in private, or not at all.

Many people think children need Sunday school to learn good values. Some parents even think they need to "put the fear of God" in their children to be sure they behave. But religion is not the only pathway to teaching our children good values. In fact, it is quite possible for children to develop an effective moral compass independent of specific religious values. How? By listening to our parents.

The day I asked my mother in my loud four-year-old voice why the woman on the bus was fat, I learned that you should think before you speak so you don't hurt other people's feelings. Moral lesson number one: treat others with respect, even people who have a different appearance.

A few years later I was making plans with my mother for my seventh birthday. It was to be a dream come true—a horse-drawn hayride (at the height of my love affair with horses) and I was allowed to invite all the kids in my class! I had asked my teacher to give me a list of all my classmates with their addresses, and my mother and I were addressing the envelopes for the invitations. Going down the list we came to the name of the class "outcast"—the girl who was always left out when we chose up teams on the playground. I remember telling my mother that it was probably not a good idea to invite this girl, because no one liked her. In a flash my mother said that just because a kid is unpopular is no excuse to "go along" with the crowd in excluding her. So we invited everyone and everyone came.

The hayride was the high point of my elementary school days—and the invitation forged a bond between that lonely girl and myself that lasted through high school. Moral lesson number two: beware the power of the crowd—just because "everyone" feels and acts a certain way doesn't make it right.

Throughout elementary school my friends often invited me to spend Saturday night at their house. When they told me to bring a dress for Sunday morning, I knew there was a hidden agenda. Sunday morning I would go with them to church and follow along with the ceremony, but I didn't like being made to feel there was something wrong with me just because I didn't belong to any church. I never tried to persuade my religious friends to give up their beliefs. I couldn't understand why they didn't extend me the same respect for mine.

In junior high, my adolescent rebellion surfaced. Raised in an agnostic family, I began dating the son of an evangelist. Our dates often consisted of going to church socials and meetings with his parents. One school night they dropped me off rather late. I opened the door and knew something was wrong the minute I saw my mother standing there. In a fury, she said "It doesn't make it right that they keep you out 'til all hours of the night on a school night just because you've been in a church!" Moral lesson number three: if something is wrong, doing it in the name of a church doesn't make it right.

My family's lessons taught me right from wrong—to be honest, caring for others, law-abiding, but outspoken about social wrongs. My mother taught me to live by the golden rule—treat others as you would have them treat you—independent of a religious context. My parents' reliable attention to my ideas and feelings nurtured a solid social conscience and helped me learn the importance of treating others—even little kids—with respect.

Many families look to schools and community events to reinforce moral values in their kids' lives, but we can do this without dismantling the sanctity of personal beliefs that is protected by the separation of church and state. Every time a teacher encourages her students to share extra helpings with a kid who forgot his lunch or to explain a new math problem to a kid who's struggling, she is teaching important values. Every time a shop clerk helps a 10-year-old with the correct change without cheating him, he is reinforcing the value of honesty we all cherish. But when we look to the state as the arbiter and enforcer of religious values and practices, like prayer at school functions, we sow the seeds of a kind of religious tyranny that tramples on the beliefs of those who think—or worship—differently, or not at all.

Most parents want their kids to learn right from wrong and many rely on their faith or religious affiliation as a partner in this endeavor. But let's not assign this all-important parenting task to the realm of religion alone. We parents have a lot to teach our children—about what we cherish and about what it means to love, to care for, and to respect others. Our children learn from us because they want to please us, because they love us. Because we love them, we want them to turn out to be good people. When we talk with them, listen to them, and guide them, we teach them right from wrong and we help them build their own moral compass to guide them through life, even after we are gone.