OCR Text |
Show ence. I "' . Bible Succumbs To Secular Poetry, Prose PHILADELPHIA (AP) Secular poetry and prose are taking the place of the Bible as a fount of daily inspirational readings in the public schools of subur- ban Upper Darby. The range of the material runs from once highly popular versifier Edgar A. Guest, to Shakespeare, Plato and Aristotle. Aristo-tle. The excerpts are gathered into an anthology, 192 pages long, called ''Songs of the Spirit." They are suggested by the Upper Darby school teachers themselves, and compiled and edited by Miss Anne Osborne, the school system's curriculum director. About 1,000 copies of the book have been distributed to teachers. They have been used in the schools since last week. Reading from them supplant the daily Bible recitations that have been forbidden by the Supreme Court. In a foreward, Dr. H. Curwen Schlos-ser, Schlos-ser, superintendent of the township schools says: "I feel that the traditional opening exercises have a place in the school day . . "I suggest that the opening exercises consist of the reading of a selection from this book, followed by a minute of silent meditation, and conclude with the salute to the flag." Schlosser said that each teacher uses his or her own judgement in making the selections. The book was approved by the school board last summer. Included in it are passages from Albert Einstein, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Benjamin Benja-min Franklin, Lincoln, Washington, Woodrow Wilson, John Masefield, Victor Hugo, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Church-hill, Church-hill, Edna St. Vincent Millay and Emily Dickinson. Represented, too, is Thomas Paine, the intensely patriotic pamphleteer of the American Revolution, who is considered con-sidered to have been a Deist, one professing pro-fessing in God but practicing no Orthodox Ortho-dox religion. |