real life wrote:And it is not the business of schools to teach disrespect for it either.
That is your interpretation of what it would mean to describe religion as being based on myth. I would also point out at this time that it was Hawkeye, and not me, who calls for religion to be described as being based upon myth. However, i have no fundamental argument with the proposition, so i'm willing to discuss it.
Just because you allege (and that's allege, not prove) that teaching that religion is based on myth would discredit religion, doesn't make it so. It is only your opinion that this would tend to discredit religion. If you haven't done your job at home well enough to assure that your children do not maintain what you consider a commensurate respect for organized religion, you're hardly in a position to whine about what the public schools are doing.
Quote:The law against establishment cuts both directions.
This is merely nonsense. There is not a "law against establishment,"
per se; rather, there are the first two clauses of the first amendment to the constitution--and a claim about it to the effect that it "cuts both directions" simply constitutes evidence either of your ignorance, or your ineptitude in expressing yourself. The first amendment to the United States Constitution reads, in its entirety:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The first clause is known as the "no establishment clause," which means you can't force your religious opinions and practices on public institutions, which happens to include publicly funded schools. The second clause is known as the "free exercise clause." Nothing about the notion of teaching in school that religion is founded on myth in any way interferes with your free exercise of your preferred flavor of delusional religious superstition. Once again, if you haven't taught you children your imaginary friend superstition sufficiently well to immunize them against public education, you can hardly blame the schools for your failure.
Quote:If government employees teaching in schools are to be neutral, then they should be truly neutral.
Do you agree?
Oh yes, indeed i do. And i suspect that you have not considered the full implications of such a principle. That would mean that any class in a public school which teaches about religion, and which is debarred from bringing religion into disrepute, as you interpret such a notion, must give equal time to teaching about atheism, and be just as circumspect in not bringing atheism into disrepute. But it would go further than that. In civics classes, one would be obliged, on the basis of what you are attempting to propose, to teach that National Socialism, Fascism, Communism--any number of government systems which have been tried in the past, are just as valid as the democratic republican system which we have in this nation. In fact, it would mean that a neutral teacher could not allege that homosexuality were any less valid a sexual orientation than heterosexuality. It would mean that a neutral teacher could not show any preference for abstinence over promiscuity in sexual behavior.
Yes, i agree--by all means, let public school teachers be neutral,
and in all the ways which one reasonable infers from such a proposition.
