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UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION

BULLETIN, 1910, NO. 1

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WHOLE NUMBER 423

THE MOVEMENT FOR REFORM IN THE
TEACHING OF RELIGION IN THE
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF

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LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,

BUREAU OF EDUCATION,
Washington, April 7, 1910.

SIR: The historical relations of public education to the institutions of religion have been variously significant. While governmental affairs and ecclesiastical affairs have been set apart from each other in this country, and the teaching of sectarian doctrines is generally excluded from the schools of the several States, an understanding of the relations actually subsisting between the schools and the organized religion of other lands is greatly to be desired. It can help in many ways to a clearer insight into discussions which occasionally arise in this country and to a better appreciation of the import of changes which are proposed from time to time.

In those countries in which a close connection is still maintained between public education and a state religion, important changes are now in progress. In some instances these changes have as yet gone no further than an active controversy, which represents the rise of new sentiments and the shifting of public interest. In other lands a reorganization has been effected through processes of law and public administration.

Attention was called in the first number of the bulletin of this office to discussions in the House of Commons which turned in part on questions relating to religious instruction (The education bill of 1906 for England and Wales as it passed the House of Commons, by Anna Tolman Smith, bulletin, 1906, no. 1). Accounts of other controversies and changes in this field, with particular reference to European lands, have appeared from time to time in the annual reports of the Commissioner of Education.

In the monograph which is submitted herewith, Prof. Arley B. Show, of the Leland Stanford Junior University, has presented a careful study of the recent agitation in favor of a change in the teaching of religion in the public schools of the kingdom of Saxony, one

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