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May I borrow the soapbox?
Nobody asked her if Santa was real. She was a sub who was basically supposed to fill out the week before the holidays with a recitation of a Christmas story.
Instead she went off on these 6 year olds with a story about Nickolas of Myrna who is DEAD.
As Dlishsguy said, the gap between the Santa story and faith based biology is huge. Reading a fable is not the same as saying that children have to believe in it. It's not the same as insisting to a biology student that they study Genesis instead of a biology text to get their education.
Virtually every truth we teach children in elementary school is a conditional truth to be modified in later years when they can better understand concepts of value and judgement. Age 6 is not the age to be busting out Nickolas of Myrna, the pagan fire tree, or any of that.
Who would be hurt if she just followed the lesson plan?
Who would be hurt if we teach a generation of teenagers that man was created about 4,000 years ago, and woman was created from his rib?
Big difference.
If teachers are to follow the practice of exposing "shit" we "make up", then we can forget about ever teaching them about literary devices such as allegories. Just give them a user's manual for life that explains everything in factual terms, and tell them to consign their imaginations to the dustbin.
These kids are just learning 1+1=2 and this sub decided the lesson for the day would be in calculus. They absolutely do not have the cognetive process in place to understand how to get from Saint Nicholas to modern day allegorical Santa.
For all of you out there who were a secret Santa this year, you don't exist. Stop hogging the oxygen.
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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet
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