In this far-ranging, incisive study, Robert Ulich analyzes the various forces that have molded the educational systems and common intellectual heritage of Western nations. Ulich has added to this revised edition of his work an important chapter describing new developments in educational policy.

In “Constitutional Mandates and Choices,” Paul Freund discusses the recent Supreme Court school-prayer decisions and the Constitution. Acknowledging the need for instilling tradition, morality, and reverence—the “religious component” called for by many—Freund still maintains that “the school-prayer decisions are more important for the doors they leave open than for those they shut. The study of religious tradition, training in moral analysis, and the cultivation of sensibilities beyond the intellectual are all left open and beckoning… Today the need is not to reform the First Amendment but to examine and reform our ideas and practices of moral education in the schools.”

After presenting a brief historical description of religious education in our Western Judeo-Christian civilization, and outlining the present situation in our public schools, Robert Ulich, in “The Historical Present,” declares that if by “religion” we do not mean allegiance to a particular creed, then, “whatever is the decision of the Supreme Court, it will never be able to divorce the religious from the educational spheres in our education system.”