I disagree. For us dishonest bastards to get any benefit from our lack of morals, we need a steady stream of trusting fools. We should therefore play up the idea that No One Lies Because Lying is Always Wrong in schools, so that we will be able to exploit the young for our own ends.
Wow, the President posted to my thread.
White lies are the lubricant of civilization. We are all expected to lie about inconsequential things because the unvarnished truth is often painful, and often preventing pain to others is a greater good than an overly-scrupulous dedication to the truth.
So you don’t tell Aunt Sally that’s she’s ugly, even though she is.
You don’t respond to a mention of someone’s religion with “Oh, that old load of hooey!”
And the only correct answer to “Do these jeans make me look fat?” is “No, you look great!”
Gleefully debunking the harmless misapprehensions of others is RUDE and should generally be avoided in the interests of civility. And since I’m a great advocate of drilling politeness into children both at home and at school, I’m perfectly happy with a ban on Santa outing.
(And lest someone point out the irony of making such a claim in a forum devoted to ruthless debunking no matter what the cost … let me point out that the SD audience is here by choice. What constitutes polite discourse here is not the same as what consistutes polite discourse in the real world.)
Actually, the only correct answer to “does this make me look fat” is to look serious for a moment, then suddenly grab your skull, fall to the ground, and scream something about earwigs.
Why take away one of the few happy childhood memories these kids will have when they are older and working in our nations mills and factories?
Why wait until they’re older to put them to work in the mill?
Why, when I was a kid, living in a paper bag in a septic tank, I used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down at the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in week out for sixpence a week…
You had a paper bag?
Luxury.
What, it’s impossible to do both?
Childhood is short enough as it is. Why must all you cynics insist on willfully destroying the wonder and innocence of it long before this cold hard world does it for them? Is destroying belief in magic THAT important? Rationality must trump imagination, from cradle to grave?
Or is it that this silly myth is being perpetuated in a classroom? We’ve already removed all the legend, not to mention the ideals to be drawn from them, from our historical lessons in favor of plain, bare facts, all in the name of unswerving adherence to true historical authenticity. Columbus, rather than being a brave explorer setting out to disprove the prevailing view of the world, is now painted as a greedy mercenary looking for virgin wealth to exploit. Our former frontier heroes are now latter-day conquistadors and ecological terrorists, seeking to eradicate native fauna and peoples to further the white-man’s superiority.
God is forbidden from public classrooms, and now the humanists want Santa Claus banned, too. (Assuredly the Tooth Fairy, and, Darwin-forbid, the Easter Bunny, symbol of gasp! a Christian holiday, must also be highly verboten.) So schools should offer nothing other than dispassionate rationality to the nation’s youth? No wonder more and more parents are looking for options to the public education system…
Yes, God forbid children should learn facts instead of propaganda.
Speaking as a kindergarten teacher, I’ve not had a single student in three years teaching at this grade level who believes in Santa, or whose parents actively perpetuate the myth/lie/secular commercial invention of a jolly old elf bearing Christmas tidings. Not ONE.
If I ever had a student ask questions about Santa Claus, chances are I wouldn’t have to say a word, because my other students would disabuse them of the notion real quick. Nothing’s so high on the cruelty-to-kids-by-other-kids count as shattering illusions. Ask my student, Kobe, what a year HE’S had so far.
P.S. Dunno about other public school districts, but in the two I’ve worked in so far (South Carolina and Ohio), we don’t celebrate Halloween AT ALL and we barely even mention Christmas anymore. We call the break in mid-December 'til January the “Winter Holidays” now, dontcha know?
Wow. The times, they have a changed.
I think I was in the 3rd grade before I had kids say to me “you were right, there is no Santa”.
'Course, that didn’t mean they still didn’t want to kick my ass for trying to ruin their fantasy the 2 years prior.