Disturbing Omission

As a onetime president of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America and a top Protestant layman, Ohio's Charles P. Taft has long believed that Protestants should find a way to fill a major gap in the public-school curriculum. Last week Lawyer Taft (brother of the Senate's Mr. Republican) made his point before a meeting of the Warren (Ohio) Citizens Commission for the Public Schools :

"The most important element that we take into our life work is the value system by which we live. For those of us who base those values upon religion, it has been disturbing to find religion excluded from the tax-supported institutions, while anti-religion is welcomed in the guise of science, sociology, or philosophy . . .

"The development of moral and spiritual values is basic to all other educational objectives, especially because the war and its aftermath have left a great task of moral reconstruction . . . knowledge about religion is essential for a full understanding of our culture, literature, art, history, and current affairs."

Taft was not advocating specific religious courses in the public schools. But, he concluded, "We could well take a leaf from the book of our Jewish brethren, who send their children to public school, but set up regular supplementary schools for the teaching of religion."

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