Abington Township School District, Pennsylvania (prior to 1963) endorsed the public school policy stating:
<Each school...shall be opened by the reading, without comment, of a chapter in the Holy Bible....Participation in the opening exercises...is voluntary. The student reading the verses from the Bible may select the passages and read from any version he chooses....There are no prefatory statements, no questions asked or solicited, no comments or explanations made and no interpretations given at or during the exercises. The students and parents are advised that the student may absent himself from the classroom or, should he elect to remain, not participate in the exercises.> 1962PA001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
1962PA001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Pennsylvania School District of the Abington Township. Prior to 1963 school policy. Abington v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 211 (1963). Wall v. Cooke, (Mass.), 7 Am. Law Reg. (Os.) 417, stated: "The Bible has long been in our common schools....It was placed there as the book best adapted from which to 'teach children and youth the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity, and a universal benevolence, sobriety, moderation, and temperance....But, in doing this, no scholar is requested to believe it, none to receive it as the only true version of the laws of God. The teacher enters into no argument to prove its correctness, and gives no instruction in theology from it. To read the Bible in school and like purposes, or to require it to read without sectarian explanations, is no interference with religious liberty.'" Elizabeth Ridenour, Public Schools-Bible Curriculum (Greensboro, N.C.: National Council On Bible Curriculum, 1996), p. 34. Robert K. Skolrood, The National Legal Foundation, letter to National Council on the Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, Sept. 13, 1994, p. 8.