Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Be good for goodness' sake.



I don't know how many times I've been accused of raising children with no moral compass. The reason? Because we don't subscribe to a religion. Apparently the only way to lead a moral life is to believe in an invisible deity and read a book written by men thousands of years ago.

I found a great article on morality and godless parenting:

http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistschildren/a/KidsReligion.htm

Monday, August 24, 2009

The chicken and the egg.



When I heard that a farm* would be bringing animals to my daughter's school, I thought she'd have a wonderful time. After all, kids do tend to love learning new things, especially in a hands-on kind of way. Never did I think the day would progress as it did.

I received a call from a friend of mine who has a child who went to the morning session of the farm presentation. She said that the woman teaching the class said that "God put the yolk into the egg for the baby chick to eat," and that "Chickens must be married before they have eggs."

I believe a rather vibrant WTF?! is appropriate here.

Keep in mind this is a public school. I am not opposed to my kids being curious about religion or wanting to explore one or many, but it's inappropriate for this to be said in a public school. I called the principal immediately who said that he hadn't heard anything about it, and he was sure I'd made some kind of mistake. Surely one of his teachers would have come to him and told him that such a thing was said. In what I believe was an attempt to placate me he said he would investigate this and call me back.

No more than five minutes later I received a voicemail from said principal saying something to the effect of, "Mrs. ________, I am SO sorry. That was indeed said. I spoke to the woman teaching the class and she admitted to having taught that. Rest assured that the afternoon class will NOT be hearing this, and that this group will never be invited back to this school."

Wow. I honestly hadn't expected that. The principal sat in on the afternoon session of the class and caught the woman as she started into the yolk-and-egg explanation, and he directed her to take a different course with that. Kudos to the principal for standing up and keeping unnecessary (and false) religious teachings out of public school.


*I have purposely omitted the name of this farm.