The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith today announced support of President Kennedy’s program of Federal aid to education and its opposition to either grants or loans to elementary and secondary schools outside the public school system. At the same time, it urged an early court test of the constitutionality of government loans to parochial schools so that “the issue of separation of church and state can be removed from the discussion of public policy in relation to such loans.”
The announcement was made by Henry E. Schultz, national chairman of the League, following action taken by the organization’s national executive committee. In arriving at its decision, Mr. Schultz declared that the League’s executive committee “urged all Americans to be extremely sensitive to efforts which circumvent, dilute, or chip away at the basic concept of the separation of church or state.”
“We believe that independent schools and church controlled schools also have important contributions to make to American life. But these contributions must be made independently and not with the financial assistance of government,” Mr. Schultz said. He emphasized that “the public schools are the public’s business and the private schools are not.”
“We believe that the granting of government aid to private, sectarian or parochial schools would inevitably set up a race among religious groups to establish competing school systems. Such a development would inevitably weaken the public schools as a unifying force in American life, and as a place where young Americans of diverse backgrounds learn to live together,” the ADL leader stressed.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
