ATLANTA — Members of the Georgia General Assembly filed a bill to require all public elementary and secondary schools to display copies of the Ten Commandments in various locations on campuses across the state.
According to House Bill 313, the bill would require that in addition to documents relating to American history and other “significant documents,” the Ten Commandments must be displayed in K-12 schools.
Should the bill pass, schools will have until July 1 to publicly display the Ten Commandments in a minimum of three main areas of each facility.
Those three locations in each school are the main entrance of the main building, the main entrance to the school library and the main entrance to the cafeteria.
If the bill does pass, it would make Georgia the second state in the country to require the display. Louisiana became the first state to do so last year.
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As part of the bill, the lawmakers who introduced HB 313 also say their legislation is meant to increase students’ understanding of, and familiarly with, historical documents from America and use them to support education focused on United States history, American government, civics, economics and social studies.
According to the legislative text, the bill makes the Ten Commandments an addition to other currently required documents, equating it in importance to public education, and the need to display or read excerpts to classes from:
- The Preamble to the Georgia Constitution;
- The Declaration of Independence;
- The United States Constitution, with emphasis on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments;
- The Bill of Rights;
- The Mayflower Compact;
- The national motto;
- The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States flag;
- The Pledge of Allegiance to the Georgia flag;
- The National Anthem;
- The writings, speeches, documents, and proclamations of the Founding Fathers and Presidents of the United States;
- The Emancipation Proclamation;
- The Gettysburg Address;
- The Northwest Ordinance of 1787;
- Decisions of the United States Supreme Court; and
- Acts of the Congress of the United States, including the published text of the Congressional Record.
To meet the requirements of the new legislation, if it passes, posters of the Ten Commandments will have to be obtained and made public in the form of a poster. Each poster of the Ten Commandments would have to be a minimum size of 16 by 20 inches tall and include all 10 of the Commandments.
Additionally, the posters must be displayed with what the bill describes as contextual statements reading:
“The history of the Ten Commandments in American public education. The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries. Around the year 1688, The New England Primer became the first published American textbook and was the equivalent of a first grade reader. The New England Primer was used in public schools throughout the United States for more than 150 years to teach Americans to read and contained more than 40 questions about the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments were also included in public school textbooks published by educator William McGuffey, a noted university president and professor. A version of his famous McGuffey Readers was written in the early 1800s and became one of the most popular textbooks in the history of American education, selling more than 100 million copies. Copies of the McGuffey Readers are still available today. The Ten Commandments also appeared in a textbook published by Noah Webster which was widely used in American public schools along with America’s first comprehensive dictionary that Webster also published. His textbook, The American Spelling Book, contained the Ten Commandments and sold more than 100 million copies for use by public school children all across the nation and was still available for use in American public schools in the year 1975.”
While the bill requires that schools display these items, it also says that schools cannot be forced to use public funds to purchase the posters or framed copies of the Ten Commandments.
A line in the bill stipulates that should it pass, it must not create an unfunded mandate on any public school, school system or board of education. Instead, it would set up each copy to be purchased via donated funds or accepted from offers of privately donated copies.
The Georgia Department of Education would also have to publicize a list with information that helps connect schools and school districts to free resources that comply with the provisions of the bill.
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