Yeah, ACLU is a pretty cool organization. At least, I often agree w/ their positions on different issues.
However, I think they're just scampering around the edge of this one.
Look, there is absolutely no need in our society for another expensive, ineffective layer of elective school courses in religion. If you want your kid to learn all about religions, get them out of school so they'll have enough time to study then send or take them to various churches, libraries and Bible/comparitive religion studies. Any kid w/ reasonable intelligence and a sincere interest can surely educate themselves well enough by the time they're about 16 to handle seminary or college level course work.
How about other hot topics. How about economic facts and attitudes? I was shocked when I read the introductory chapter of my daughter's 9th grade economics book. According to McGraw, our value to society and the economy begins and ends with our ability to tolerate our meaningless, disconnected job tasks in order to consume the products of everyone else's meaningless, isolated, boring jobs.
Fucking amazing! My dad and other mentors taught me that our value to society and the economy is to be producers of useful, innovative, quality products and services; to take care of ourselvs and our own, to save and invest and, hopefully, leave something of value to the next generation.
Again, glad I never paid attention in school!
Here's another nifty trick. Want your kid to be competent at handling money? Give them some money. It can be an allowance, earnings from a paper route or some other venture. As soon as they express an interest (usually by around age 3 or 4 if you take them with you pretty often when you go shopping) let them get a little practice at price shopping, counting change, figuring sales tax and so forth.
The way they do it in school? It's so silly it's hard to even believe reasonably intelligent adults can carry it off with a straight face. They manufacture cardboard or paper faccimilies of coins then drill the kids, on paper, w/ meaningless, redundant and boring questions that they haven't even asked.
Same with telling time. Rather than just explain how to read a clock and encourage the kids to try it whenever they have a need to know what time it is, they make them sit and entertain meaningless invented scenareos; again, not when they ask for it but whenever the curriculum authors and tweakers have decided they should think about it.
Life's just so much simpler than that.
Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name. Thy kingdom nada, thy will be nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.
--Ernest Hemingway, American author
