Nathan Tabor demonstrates why we should perhaps regulate homeschool curriculum:
Or consider this: A national poll reported by CBS News two years ago indicated that Americans don’t believe in human evolution. Fifty-five percent said God created humans in their present form, i.e., no apes were involved in the creation of man and woman. And yet, school districts throughout the U.S. continue to waste their precious resources teaching children that man evolved from monkeys. It seems to me that, if a child believes that he or she has an ancestor who’s an ape, he or she is more likely to behave like one.
Oh Nate. You’re pretty. So if most Americans don’t believe it, but nearly every single scientist does, we should toss out those fancy “facts” and instead teach majority opinion. If only we had stuck to our guns in the days of Gallileo, the world would be a much better place.
This bit of special wisdom follows Nathan’s argument that “abstinence-plus” sexual health education — that is, sexual health education that gives students complete and honest information — is bad, even though the vast majority of parents support it being taught in schools. Yet comprehensive sex education is taught in fewer than half of the public schools in this country. Apparently, while parental opinion on which subjects they want their children to learn should be discounted, the completely uninformed, unscientific, counterfactual opinions of some parents should dictate what their children learn in class. If Nathan had his way, we’d all still be thinking that the world is flat, because dominant ideologies would replace scientific fact.
And then there’s the biggest money-waster—the failure to teach children the difference between right and wrong.
I’m going to cut him off here and pose this question: How can we be wasting money on not doing something? Not teaching moral absolutism isn’t costing taxpayers a dime. Although if Nathan went to public school, I want my money back.
The fancy name for the problem is moral relativism. It’s a concept that’s preached in the mainstream media everyday: “No one should force his or her moral values on anyone else…That’s your truth, but not my truth…Don’t post your Ten Commandments here.” There is a religion taught in public schools—it’s just not the Judeo-Christian kind. It’s a religion dedicated to the principles of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Education Association. God is irrelevant; the state is divine; and everyone should take an oath of “tolerance”—meaning an acceptance of whatever kind of deviant lifestyle is being promoted at the moment on television.
Why not spend some of our tax dollars teaching schoolchildren that life really means something—that every child in the womb deserves a chance at life? Let’s face it—if you teach a student that killing an unborn child is acceptable, what’s to prevent that child from growing into a teenager who thinks it’s O.K. to pick up a gun and shoot someone? It doesn’t matter whether the weapon is a semi-automatic or a scalpel—a killing is a killing.
Word, Nathan. Skip science class and march right into a comprehensive course on “Why women should have no rights to their own lives.” Otherwise, there will be school shootings. Because, you know, it’s not like the majority of school shootings are perpetuated by white male adolescents in red states with lax gun control laws.
And the thing that tends to prevent people from picking up guns and going on shooting sprees, despite the fact that abortion is generally legal in this country, is that whole moral relativism bit. We’ve evolved (ha, kidding! God created us) to be able to understand complex moral dilemmas. There are some killings of human beings that are socially sanctioned and almost universally justified — like killing enemy soldiers during combat or killing someone in defense of your own life. There are other killings that are more controversial, but still have backing from a decent segment of the population — like civilian casualties in war time. We understand that some killings are more justified than others, and that it’s generally ok to, say, kill cancer cells that are attacking your body. It’s generally ok to shoot someone who is brandishing a gun and attempting to shoot you. It’s generally ok to kill an animal and eat it, should there be no other food source. We also understand that killing is not always active — if your uncle goes into kidney failure and you’re the only possible match for a transplant, have you killed him if you refuse to give him a kidney?
That’s exactly how we maintain the social order — by recognizing that context matters, and that not every kind of killing is the same. Shooting kids at school isn’t the same as shooting enemy soldiers on the field. Terminating a pregnancy isn’t the same as shooting someone on the street. It’s a black-and-white worldview that’s dangerous here, not a morally relativist one.
In the kind of school budget that I’m proposing, we’ve cut out money for condom education, evolution propaganda, liberal indoctrination, and abortion promotion. That leaves quite a bit of money left. And we should be using that money to make schools safer and teenagers more disciplined.
Let’s take some of the leftover cash and spend it on metal detectors. After all, a middle school student’s life is just as precious as a business traveler’s. If we care enough about airborne terrorism to place metal detectors in airports, we should care enough about school-based terrorism to install detectors in schools. It’s a shame that we would have to take this step but, with school shootings becoming a routine part of the headlines, it’s now necessary.
And finally, let’s devote some money for boot camps for teens. It’s the only way to get some teenagers in shape—and out of prison.
Why do I have a feeling that Nathan would place himself in the category of teens who don’t need to go to boot camp, and instead promote sending those tough “urban youth” there instead? (And if he’s worried about teenagers getting killed, perhaps bootcamp isn’t the best choice). Boot camps also aren’t very successful successful of keeping teenagers out of jail. Although I’m sure that they would make great holding pens for all those “undesireable” teens clogging up the public school system.