The Elementary School Act, Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Elementary Schools," was proposed legislation that Jefferson submitted to Joseph C. Cabell in September 1817. Jefferson's proposal was not an official act of the Virginia legislature, nor of any other legislature.
A comparison made between Jefferson's polygraph copy and the proposed bill received by Cabell indicates that Jefferson deleted certain portions of his original text. One of the deleted portions is frequently quoted: "no religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practised [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination."[1]
