Reading the news this morning, I probably shouldn't cause it just pisses me off sometimes. There is a news article about a school system that busses their kids off campus to attend bible classes. Not surprising, the law is you can't teach that stuff in a public school, so they send them elsewhere. If the parents want it that way, have at it I say. It's the dialogue that comes out of it that pisses me off. Here's some stuff from the news article....

Jack Hinton, president of the local private group that offers the lessons, attributes the opposition to a small minority, many of them newcomers to the valley. Without religious classes, he said, "kids get into trouble and have no moral structure on which to combat drugs, sex, pornography and all that."

So, following this logic, there is no moral structure here in this house, cause these kids definitely don't attend religious studies. Here's another....

But opponents argue the classes are divisive, and the schools already have character-education classes, which teach children about right and wrong without religion.

"Christians don't have a monopoly on morality," says Renee Staton, a Staunton native whose husband is Jewish.

Beverly Ridell, who grew up going to the Staunton schools, teaches first- and second-grade Sunday school at church and opposes religious classes during school time.

"I asked them whether Jesus was a Christian and they said 'yes.' When I said, 'Jesus was a Jew,' one girl said, 'But Jesus was a good person,"' Ridell said.

"If Christians are good people, what are Jews? These are 6- and 7-year-old kids. This is an age where what's right and what's wrong are clear and unambiguous."

Because of remarks made by this Beverly girl, kids really do need to learn what the bible is all about. But it shouldn't be limited to the bible, they need an understanding of all the religions of the world. But what is wrong with the parents teaching the kids this? If the lesson is a sound one, it really doesn't matter what the kids learn in school, what's drilled into their heads at home is what's gonna stick. That's always been the case.

Hinton acknowledged that the struggle to keep the Bible classes might be partly based on a desire to cling to tradition in the face of a changing community.

"Tradition has the ability to make you a better person, make you a better citizen, make you involved with the positive aspects of a community," he said.

But parent Heather Ward thinks tradition must evolve.

"Unless we build a wall around our city, we're going to have to deal with the changing demographics," she said. "That's just part of modern life."

Tradition. Such a fucked up concept. Yes, tradition can be a positive thing in a community as this guy says, but is it worth it to put up with the negative aspects of following tradition? Tradition isn't so important that we need to keep information from ourselves, though some would beg to differ. If tradition were really that essential to human activity, our generals would still be running around as mentors to adolescent boys while they discharge their duties of command. This was an ancient Roman tradition. Sounds like a sound policy, boys learning by doing. Only problem with this Roman tradition is that while the boys were learning from the generals by doing, the generals were doing the boys. Hmmmm, allasudden it's not such a fine tradition.......