Atheist Memes

I have. I spent two years teaching history to freshman in high school and collectively months of my lesson plan were about the historical development and path of polytheistic traditions into the early Catholic Church, the birth and spread of Islam, the reformation, the development and spread of Buddhism, and the rise of Protestant factionalism in the 19th century (it’s an American school, so that one is important). It was absolutely not hard. I didn’t experience any fallout, pushback, or controversy.

So, first things first. There's actually no such thing as any single 'American educational system'. Lets be perfectly clear on that point. The control exerted by the federal government is proportionate to the amount of funding it provides- which in most states is less than ten percent of the total educational funding. Most of which comes from the states they reside in (which also exerts the most control on educational standards.) and the specific local communities (which exerts the only direct control- through the use of local school boards as oversight.)

Also, your assessment of the landscape of the educational system in the US is driven by sensationalist headlines and hot takes, not a strong point of view. Hell, even the article you linked doesn’t demonstrate the point you linked it with the hopes of supporting.

bull. fucking. shit. It's not 'sensationalist headlines' driving the flurry of laws signed by DeSantis in Florida; many of which are predicated on protecting the feelings of mostly-white, mostly-christian ass fucks... who apparently think slavery was beneficial to slaves and really don't like being called on their bullshit. Or who think the LGBTQ+ people don't deserve the same respect everyone else has, or banning books talking about the holocaust.

It is not a "hot take" to recognize that there are places where school boards are now a battle ground of culture-war issues, that are mostly white, mostly christian assholes trying to force their beliefs on the rest of us. this shows itself up in the trans-gender bathroom debate, in the debates about racism and African-American studies, or racism and Native American history. or in STEM with the rampant bullshittery going on.

just as I don't know you... you don't know me. My views come from sitting at school board meetings listening to the debates happening- and I'm not even in a particularly contentious area. Yet in the last year, the number of numskulls asking to ban books because of what effectively comes down to it offending their beliefs across a broad spectrum of issues is up. I've spent the last few years watching (and speaking my mind,) at these events.

hell, earlier this year, one of the issues brought to my local school board was that a teacher had told a Mormon kid that Native Americans weren't actually Lamanites. a belief that (I'm pretty sure,) most Mormons don't actually hold anymore. To my understanding of that issue, all the teacher was actually saying was that genetic and archeological evidence did not support that belief. which is a fairly bland and reasonable statement to make.

which brings me back to the point at hand: in the current political atmosphere, it is extremely difficult to balance the presentation of modern religious world views in a manner which is not going to offend somebody. After all, an evangelical christian is very unlikely to be happy if their creation myth were treated with the same derision they treat the Hellenistic creation myths or the Buddhist's nominally lack-of-creation in their beliefs; and the fight over Intelligent Design in biology class is a decades-old battle that is, was and remains at issue.

As for directly addressing the faiths of everyone in the school system, broadly speaking, the demographics of my particular school district includes.... Christians (the majority here, by percentage- mainline protestant, evangelical protestant and catholic), atheists (and all the other 'religious nones'... lumped in with agnostics and people who 'don't know'), Muslim, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist; along with about half a dozen or so 'other faiths' that are basically everything left over. (Humanism, deists, Unitarians, eclectics, etc.)

remember, if you accommodate one, you have to accommodate all. or you run the risk of spawning a shitload of lawsuits. lawsuits that have to be defended, and payments that take money away from already cash-strapped schools. It's simply not worth it.