Atlanta, GA. (RNS) - A college educator and a rabbi disagreed here on the role public schools should have in fostering religious and moral values.

Dr. Arthur W. Foshay of Columbia University’s Teachers College said the need to teach these values in public schools is “greatly increased by the conflicting tempers of our times.”

Rabbi Alfred L. Goodman of Columbus, Ga., said that while along with Dr. Foshay he was “anxious to see morality, ethics, manners and taste improved and promoted,” the teaching of spiritual values “must continue to be the responsibility of home, church and synagogue.”

Both spoke at a concluding session of an Institute on Public Education and Religion. Attended by some 100 clergymen, educators and laymen, the institute was sponsored by units of Emory University and the University of Georgia, in cooperation with the National Conference of Christians and Jews Religious Freedom and Public Affairs Project.

Dr. Foshay called for development of “thorough and well conceived curriculum materials in the field of teaching about religion” in the public schools, as well as the testing of spiritual values.

He urged creation of “the kind of public discussion of the importance of teaching these that is the necessary prerequisite in our democracy for the development of any public consensus.”

In opposing courses about religion in the schools, Rabbi Goodman claimed they were “unwise, unwanted and unwarranted.”

“If our children are failing to receive proper instruction in spiritual values it is unfair to charge the public schools with this failure,” he said, “and in my opinion unnecessary to add another ingredient to the pressure cooker in which school administrators constantly stew, by attempting to introduce courses about religion into our school system.” Dr. Foshay cautioned that “if the time ever comes when people play it cool about religion, we can be sure that our society will come unstuck.”

Pointing out that U.S. Supreme Court decisions on religion in the schools fall “far short of giving a sufficient answer,” he stated that “distinction between religious practice and knowledge about religion is at the root of our problem.” Teaching about religion in the schools “scarcely exists” now, Dr. Foshay continued. “We will have to handle the question of controversy before we can require school people to enter the lists.” He said there is no public consensus on the issue at this time and “every evidence of a seriously

divisive public anxiety on the topic.” “If we teach about religion, and leave it at that, it will seem only to matter politically and culturally,” the educator said. “But if we teach this material and at the same time teach values that we all hold, it will become apparent that religion matters not only politically and culturally, but morally and spiritually as well.” Dr. Foshay summed up by declaring that “we are called upon not only to decide what values we wish to teach, and to teach them, but to produce a climate in the school and out of it that is consistent with the values we promote.” Rabbi Goodman told the institute that courses about religion or the teaching of spiritual values in schools are meaningless to children unless they can see adults practicing these values everyday.

“We can add course upon course to our school curricula in values, in religion and about religion,” he said, “but until children see that these values mean something to us, until they see a pattern of morality used as a guide to practical living, these courses will be about as meaningful as English literature to a chimpanzee.”

He observed that “when you and I are truly determined what values we want our children to have, they will have them. They will have them in the public school, they will see them practiced in the home, they will learn them in the church and synagogue, and the whole community will be infused with their influence.”