The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith urged this weekend that New York City’s Board of Education take no action on a controversial report dealing with the teaching of religion and “religious values” in the public schools, until a survey within the school system establishes “the need for a reconsideration of present practices.”
The report, prepared and approved by the Board of Superintendents of the Board of Education and entitled “Moral and Spiritual Values and the Schools,” is intended as a teaching guide by which supervisory and classroom instructors can give greater emphasis to the religious values “implicit” in secular subjects of the school curriculum. “We do believe it to be a function of the public schools — and one which they have discharged –to instill moral and spiritual values in our children, those values which are basic to all religions,” the ADL statement said.
Thus, in asking the Board of Education to make no policy changes without further study, the League added: “The Board of Superintendents’ report raises an important question: does it further religious indoctrination of the children in contravention of the principle of separation of church and state# The problem arises when it is urged that the schools undertake to teach the religious bases for these values. We believe that the public schools should teach these values without reliance on religious authority.”
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