In some public schools, students are told evolution is "only a theory" but are told Christian miracles are historical fact.
I've been student teaching in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. Even here, 6th grade history classes use a text called Content-Area Reader: The Ancient World: Prehistory to the Roman Empire edited by Judith Irvin. One article included is "The Spread of Christianity" by Pamela Palmer. This article, about the early Christians, includes this passage:
Just northwest of Jerusalem, in Lydda, [the Apostle] Peter healed the invalid Aeneas, and at Joppa, he brought Dorcas back to life. Miracles such as these attracted many followers, which gave the Church increasing diversity.
Other history textbooks about this era describe miracles, but preface them with phrases such as, "It was reported that ..." or "The Bible describes what happened next, saying ..." This text doesn't even bother with such qualifications.
The 6th grade class where I was pushed to use this article has several children who are Hindu, Muslim, or otherwise non-Christian. The textbook does not describe leaders of these other faiths having the ability to perform miracles. Only Christianity gets that level of validity.
I happen to be a Christian myself, but I don't like to insult people of other faiths. I certainly don't like our government doing that through the schools, using tax-payer money against a captive audience.
Worse yet perhaps, this textbook discourages critical thinking, giving students no tools to examine the accuracy of this information. Okay, that's true of most textbooks found in 6th grade classrooms. But that doesn't make it right.
This also makes school a mockery in the eyes of every student who doesn't believe Christians can perform miracles. These children grow up watching their schools lie to them. And then we in the school system sit around with dumb looks on our faces wondering why students don't want to do the work we assign them, why they don't want to study the information we put before them, and why they don't take us seriously.
If we're getting textbooks like this in the liberal Bay Area, I can only imagine the textbooks used in the Bible Belt. Meanwhile, students in many areas are told that evolution, backed by the most solid scientific evidence, is "only a theory." I'm a Christian myself, and I find the "theory" of evolution far more plausible that the "fact" of St. Peter raising the dead.
Why do so many in the school system work to make "Christian" synonymous with "stupid"? Or are they just making "school" synonymous with "stupid"?