United States Supreme Court (1948) in the case of McCollum v. Board of Education of School District Number 71, 333 U.S. 203, 236 (1948), Justice Felix Frankfurter rendered the Court's opinion:
<Traditionally, organized education in the Western world was Church education. It could hardly be otherwise when the education of children was primarily study of the Word and the ways of God. Even in the Protestant countries, where there was a less close identification of Church and State, the basis of education was largely the Bible, and its chief purpose inculcation of piety.> 1948US001
Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson concurred:
<I think it remains to be demonstrated whether it is possible, even desirable,...to isolate and cast out of secular education all that some people may reasonably regard as religious instruction....It would not seem practical to teach either practice or appreciation of the arts if we are to forbid exposure of youth to any religious influences. Music without sacred music, architecture minus the cathedral, or painting without the Scriptural themes would be eccentric and incomplete, even from a secular point of view....Even such a 'science' as biology raises the issue between evolution and creation as an explanation of our presence on this planet. Certainly a course on English literature that omitted the Bible and other powerful uses of our mother tongue for religious ends would be pretty barren. And I suppose it is a proper, if not indispensable, part of the preparation for a worldly life to know the roles that religion and religions have played in the tragic story of mankind.
The fact is that, for good or ill, nearly everything in our culture worth transmitting, everything which gives meaning to life, is saturated with the influences derived from paganism, Judaism, Christianity-both Catholic and Protestant-and other faiths accepted by a large part of the world's people....One can hardly respect a system of education that would leave a student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought that moved the world society for a part in which he is being prepared.> 1948US002
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
1948US001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). United States Supreme Court, 1948, Justice Frankfurter, McCollum v. Board of Education of School District Number 71, 333 U.S. 203, 206 (1948). John Eidsmoe, God & Caesar-Christian Faith & Political Action (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, a Division of Good News Publishers, 1984), pp. 140-141.
1948US002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). United States Supreme Court, 1948, Justice Frankfurter, McCollum v. Board of Education of School District Number 71, 333 U.S. 203, 236 (1948). Elizabeth Ridenour, Public Schools-Bible Curriculum (Greensboro, N.C.: National Council On Bible Curriculum, 1996), p. 13, 14-15, 28, 42. Robert K. Skolrood, The National Legal Foundation, letter to National Council on the Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, Sept. 13, 1994, p. 2.