p. 16 | Moral and Religious Education in the Public Schools

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 13, 1910

Moral and Religious Education in the Public Schools

By F. FREDERICK BLISS

As a people we are deeply interested in the attitude of republican governments toward the teaching of morals and religion in the public schools. With this in mind, it occurred to us to give a little attention to the reports of the United States Bureau of Education, instituted in 1867. In our search we found no hint of this subject in the reports of the bureau till 1870, when Hebrew education received brief mention. We were surprised to find that three years later the commissioner of education gave, in his report, space to “Educational Work of Sunday-schools and Missions.” That was in 1873, and nothing more of that nature, nor in any moral or religious line, received mention till 1875, when Sunday-schools and missions came in for further attention; and again in 1878.

A decade then passed with not the slightest reference to morals, missions, Sunday-schools, or religion; but in 1888 we found “Religious Instruction in the Public Schools” filling thirty-five pages of the commissioner’s annual report. Now, we thought, we shall find more and more of this; but six years passed before anything more appeared in the reports. Then, in 1894, forty-four pages were devoted to Catholic parochial schools. The next year, 1895, “The Letters of Rabbi Akibah, or the Jewish Primer, As It Was Used in the Public Schools Two Thousand Years Ago,” occupied eighteen pages of the report.

In 1896 seventy-five pages were devoted to Sunday-schools, and the next year thirty-five to the Bible in public schools and State universities. In 1903 Catholic parochial schools were again noticed, this time occupying twenty-one pages. The last report, that of 1909, has so many notices of matters of this nature that we leave it for fuller treatment in the future. For instance, three pages of this report are devoted simply to a list of works on moral and religious education; and throughout the first volume of the report the passages which refer to this vital matter are of such a nature as to suggest the desirability of carrying the investigation to a further point. F. FREDERICK BLISS.