Delegates to the British Columbia Teachers Federation convention urged today the elimination of compulsory religious exercises in public schools of the province. Under a Public Schools Act, schools must set aside the first five minutes of each school day for a prescribed Bible reading and recital of the Lord’s Prayer.
Using such terms as “farcical” and “mumbo-jumbo” to describe the compulsory exercises, the 1,200 delegates noted that the schools also were attended by children of Jewish, Moslem and other faiths. One teacher described an experiment in which he asked his pupils to write out what had been said in the day’s Bible reading. He said most of the pupils returned blank pieces of paper to him.
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