Okay, this is one of many problems I have.
Christian fundamentalists (and extemists of all religions, from Hindu to Buddhist to Islam to atheism) are having a detrimental effect on education. Groups like these spend millions of dollars pushing their viewpoints.
Did you know the Amish rarely educate their children past the eighth grade? They aren't the only ones. those kids are needed on the farms, on the communes. You should see some of the texts available for home-schoolers. They would make you weep with frustration. In my little sister's public school in north Louisiana, she was made fun of as the only white student to opt out of the elective bible class (by the teacher, no less).Children who graduate from some private Christian schools (even some colleges) are woefully ill prepared for further education or limited in career options. While this is also true of public and more secular or less extreme institutions, the reasons are vastly different, more attributable to budgetary, disciplinary and other concerns, as opposed to a flawed policy regarding curriculum.
Worse, it influences policy decisions. Say I am prescribed birth-control to help prevent growth of cancerous cells in my uterus. The local pharmacy, staffed entirely by, oh, I dunno, Baptists, refuses to fill it on the grounds that birth-control = abortion. The nearest other pharmacy that accepts my insurance is over an hour away, one way.
Why can a pharmacist discriminate against me on the basis of religion? Can a racist pharmacist refuse to dispense prescriptions to blacks? This is ridiculous. My doctor decides what is good for me based on science. If I need advice on metaphysical issues, I will inquire of the clergy. The pharmacist should do the job for which they are being paid. The fact that he fails to do so reflects a basic misunderstanding of the applicable science. Therin lies the problem.
Science is science - faith is faith. The two are not incompatible - they are two seperate issues. This applies to the sciences of history (we don't teach holocaust denial), astronomy (do we teach astrology alongside it?), literature (who did write Shakespeare's plays?), and every other field, with the reluctant exceptions of philosophy and theology.
We want to give our children the best education possible, so we give them the best science available. We give them the theories that the preponderance of the evidence supports. These theories are subject to revision (it took a while to figure out planetary orbits were elliptical, not circular) or even dismissal (geocentrism, flat earth) as new evidence is uncovered.
That's the best thing about science. It's self-correcting.
Religious fundamentalism, however, is not. It purports to be absolute truth. Even the smallest change admits innaccuracy. Either the earth is flat, or it is not. Truth is immutable. Things aren't Sort Of True, not in their Book.
Find out your local schools' practices. You owe it to the children. Insist on continued separation of church and state. Do it for yourself.
Or don't be surprised at the kind of widespread idiocy, apathy, and willful ignorance that got this administration and those like them in power in the first place.
This is a great link
I'm going to attempt to repost this at a reasonable hour, as I have a terrible habit of posting in the middle of the night, plus, I'm heartily sick of Plame et al....que sera sera, and what not. I'll catch it when it seras. 'Til then, here's a subject change.