Many good-hearted Mainers are still alive who remember the one-room schoolhouse, with a portrait of Washington and Lincoln on the wall, and the Bible placed within handy reach.

Our lives are much more complicated now. Many communities boast Taj Mahals of learning, with shining gymnasiums, roomy auditoriums, and heated swimming pools.

Yet statistics show that our students rank last among the students of the industrialized world; and violent crime and alcohol and drug abuse are growing problems in our schools.

Could it be that we have lost just as much spiritually as we have gained materially?

The answer can be found in a little-known and little-quoted Maine law.

We reprint it here in its entirety for your consideration.

CHAPTER 37 REVISED STATUTES OF MAINE, 1944

Section 126 The presidents, professors, and tutors of colleges, the preceptors and teachers of academies, and all other instructors of youth, in public and private institutions, shall use their best endeavors to impress on the minds of the children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles of morality and justice and a sacred regard for truth, love of country, humanity, and a universal benevolence; sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation, and temperance, and to lead those under their care, as their ages and capacities admit, into a particular understanding of the tendency of such virtues to preserve and protect a republican constitution, secure the blessings of liberty, and to promote their future happiness and the tendency of the opposite vices to slavery, degradation and ruin; all teachers in the public schools of the state shall devote not less than 1/2 hour of each week of the school term to teaching to the children under their charge, in correlation with other studies of the school curriculum, the great principles of humanity as illustrated by kindness to birds and animals and regard for all factors which contribute to the well-being of man.

Section 127 To insure greater security in the faith of our fathers, to inculcate into the lives of the rising generation, the spiritual values necessary to the well-being of our and future civilizations, to develop those high moral and religious principles essential to human happiness, to make available to the youth of our land the book which has been the inspiration of the greatest masterpieces of literature, art, and music, and which has been the strength of the great men and women of the Christian era, there shall be, in all the public schools of the state, daily or at suitable intervals, readings from the scriptures with special emphasis on the Ten Commandments, the Psalms of David, the Proverbs of Solomon, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Lord's Prayer. It is provided further, that there shall be no denominational or sectarian comment or teaching, and each student shall give respectful attention, but shall be free in his own forms of worship.

Section 131 Pupils attending their several places of worship for moral instruction therein at the time specified and for the period fixed shall be credited with the time so spent as if such pupils had been in actual attendance at school.