The_Dunedan

I'm just wondering where this idea came from that "society" gets to decide what children learn, and that their parents have no say in the matter. I believe in Evolution myself, but if a parent wants their child to learn ID, Creationism, or whatever, they's no skin off my nose. Either the kid will learn other ideas later on through natural exposure, and will make up their own mind and adapt, or they won't; either way, it will ultimately be THEIR decision.

"Society" does not own you, and "Society" does not own your kids. I agree that ( being unverifiable ) ID and Creationism have no place in a science classroom. However, the notion that "society" must "protect" kids from dangerous ideas is simply disgusting. For one thing, it posits that the Parent has no special place in the educational life of the child; for another that the individual is OWNED by the Group: a line of thought which is both Immoral and frightening, IMO. This is the kind of mentality which produces good little Hitlerjungen who spy on their parents and then turn them over to the State: after all, they've been taught from age 4-5 that their parents are just people they live with. When I was in DARE, back in Elem. School, I was emplicitly encouraged to rat on my parents "for their own good" if they were using drugs ( which the program defined as everything from Coca-Cola to Heroin ).

The real cure for all this nonsense, of course, is to get the State out of the education business. Gov't schools are nothing more than Statist indoctrination and "Re-education" facilities anyway: why do you think the State raises such hell about home-schooling and makes it so difficult for private schools to be accredited? Privatize the entire mess: with the associated drop in property/income taxation, parents could afford to send their kids to the school of their choice, where they could be taught the values and ideas that their family not the Bushes, Clintons, or Stalins held.