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MPAA Funds School Programs In Copyright Dogma
Matthew Skala writes "This article from the Boston Globe describes the 'What's The Diff?' program, in which U.S. students and teachers can win prizes by learning to endorse the MPAA's version of copyright law. They're using volunteer labour from Junior Achievement - not an organization I would have expected to see doing this kind of thing. I guess I'll have to move its card over in my mental Illuminati: New World Order game."
Something that is accepted as the truth without proof.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I don't know, back in the dim and distant past when I were a lad, it was considered harmful to use brainwashing and coercion in education. I guess that's the price you pay for progress though. I hear they're moving onto aversion therapy next - "just put this down your pants lad, no it doesn't matter where, trust us, we know what we're doing..." ZZZAAAPPP
Doesn't this also count as political education - I mean the MPAA/RIAA are making a big deal about buying senators and so on to fight their "cause". You'd have thought they couldn't have their cake and eat it!
Oh well, it's a damn sight better than the UK at the moment anyway, with the mad blind fascist Josef Blunkett attempting to ID all and sundry
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
"We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control"
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
Schools teaching kids that stealing is wrong. What is the world coming to?
What the hell? They're going to just start exploiting schools in order to dump their brainwashing propaganda on young people? Does anyone else think this is completely ridiculous?
Sure, they would be talking about something which is illegal, but that doesn't make this right. The children and parents should have time to discuss things like this and make their own decisions, without being misguided by the people who want to make money.
It sort of reminds me of this "War on Drugs", except the "War on Drugs" is actually more reasonable.
"Students learn to repeat the program's motto: ''If you don't pay for it, you've stolen it."
That is so incredibly wrong I don't even know where to start.
Have I stolen the contents of the Harddrive on my linux box?
Have I stolen the concerts I downloaded from etree?
Have I stolen the toys I picked up at the last trade show I went to?
And the worst part is that young kids are really prone to being manipulated and indocternated.
Let's make a difference
Is it just me who is sickened by the use of middle school students? You can't claim it's part of a broad legal education such as most citizens should have; they're not teaching them about anything but media piracy. And why would any school allow a special interest like that to "educate" middle school children?
When I went through school DARE was just getting started. Everybody was jumping behind it as a way to target kids right in the classroom early-on and say "Don't do drugs." However, DARE has been an awesome failure. Some of the buggest potheads that I know sat right next to me in those classes, parroting the lines that "Officer Jim" told us.
I believe that this program will have similar results; Little Suzie says "I'll never download, that's bad" at school then goes home and gets the whole new Britney Spears album because, ya know, it's free!
Also, this part is particularly interesting:
The ''fair use" doctrine allows the public to use copyrighted material for educational purposes. One can use another's work to parody, review, or critique that material. You can even legally swap material, as long as it's not for commercial gain, said Seltzer. ''People tape movies on their VCRs and swap it with friends without getting arrested for piracy," she said.
so, by that logic, all P2P is legal. I'm not getting any commercial by sharing files out, nor are the people that I download from. What's the diff in having 3 friends that swap movies off HBO or 3 Billion friends swapping some AC/DC albums?
There are two issues the industry is facing. The first is piracy, where people sell illegal copies of movies at a lower cost and give no compensation to the producers. The second is downloading, where consumers want to see a movie (probably poor quality) before plunking down $20 to buy the DVD. The one that costs the industry money is the first, not the second. But they're addressing the second. It seems like this program is counterproductive. Instead of getting people to reject piracy, they're trying to get people to reject downloading. This is a message that is more likely to get ignored, and as a result people are more willing to pirate movies. After all, "if I'm breaking the law already, I might as well make some money off of it"
This is as bad as that swill known as channel one that is pumped into classrooms for 10 minutes everyday. I just can't wait until they start a program to convince school students that the TCPA is a great idea.
Kids are some of the sneakiest people alive. (This is not open for debate. We were all kids once.)
Even little ones are all over music/movie piracy. They already know the thrill of getting something for free rather than asking your parents to buy it.
That thrill and the associated material benefit far outweighs anything the RIAA/MPAA or teachers can do to endorse a strict policy of legal distribution.
The coolest voice ever.
I say take the lesser of the two evils. What's better, attempting to brain wash 12 year olds, or suing them? I'd go with the brain washing, then at least the smart ones will survive.
Coming Soon: The Junior Anti-Piracy League?
Orwell is teh r0x0rz.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
What they need is a presentation on how to create content that can be legally shared (history of GNU, Creative Commons, and so on).
There is copyright law, and then there is wishful thinking ("Hey, since it is soooooo easy to download this stuff, it should be legal").
If Junior Achievement recieved sigificant feedback from "concerned parents" who do not approve of an supposedly neutral and exists-for-the-benefit-of-minors organization like Junior Achievement being used as a hired hand for the PR firms of corporate interests and would as a result in the future not consider Junior Achievement to be an organization they would want them or their children affiliated with... do you think that might cause them to rethink things perhaps?
:P
I mean, this is of course just hypothetical, since after all, how many slashbots actually have kids
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Yet Darrell Luzzo, senior vice president of Junior Achievement, defends the industry's antipiracy program by saying it's not meant to cover all aspects of copyright law.
Of course it doesn't cover all aspects of copyright law. They seem to have forgotten about section 107 (fair use).
Ryan Kennedy opposes comm
I propose that this will be as effective as the war on drugs. Sure, some kids will write their essays, get some free stuff, and the salespeople, uh, I mean, volunteer educators, will feel as if they did a good job.
But consider the following:
1. Low income children do not have the access to computers and network connections that more well-to-do children have. I doubt, therefore, that they're reaching their target audience.
2. What's more effective at influencing behavior, some JA instructor or your cool friends giving you a copy of the latest hit song/album that they ripped off the net?
3. One sided propaganda campaigns may make people feel good, but they gloss over serious issues (ie, copyright, fair use, etc) and end up breeding a ridiculous environment in which people claim to want such rules and laws yet break them anyway.
All of this sounds a lot like the war on drugs. We have our "just say no" campaigns in schools, celebrities tell us to stay off the drugs, and we make all these claims about how bad drugs are for you while ignoring or outright suppressing the truth about their effects as we trample civil liberties. And just how effective is that?
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Matthew Skala writes "This article from the Süddeutsche Zeitung describes the 'What's The Diff?' program, in which German students and teachers can win prizes by learning to endorse the Nazi Party's version of social law. They're using volunteer labour from the Hitler Youth - not an organization I would have expected to see doing this kind of thing. I guess I'll have to move its card over in my mental Illuminati: New World Order game."
I don't know if a similar thing exists in US law, but certainly under UK law the anti-smoking lobby made use of a little-known clause about 20 years ago which essentially meant that for every minute the tobacco companies were advertising on TV, the anti-smoking groups were entitled to equal TV time at little or no cost. Contrary to popular opinion, it was that which eventually persuaded the tobacco companies to give up on TV advertising - it was causing them more trouble than it was worth. (I would dig out some urls on this, but my ADSL is down and I'm on a modem at the moment)
Couldn't someone like the FSF or Creative Commons use a similar law (if it exists over that side of the pond) to do something similar with this?
...I don't really see what exactly inherently outrageous about this. Granted, its a slippery slope, having unions finance educations...but come on, who can really defend pirating whole movies? Dont give me that shit about "its not worth 10 bucks to see it in a theatre or the 20 bucks for the DVD," either. If you don't want to PAY for something, you dont deserve to have it. And if you have an honest problem with the pricing system, then refuse to pay. Just because you might think a car is over expensive doesnt mean you just jack it and ride, do you? (And of course i'm referring to blatantly luxury items like movies.) The bottom line here is that most people just dont have any respect for other people's work. And thats where it's really at, respecting another person's product enough to, if not purchase, then at least not blatantly steal. Just because something is in an easily transferable medium does not mean that it should be free. Thats bullshit.
I think that one of the problems with this sort of thing (referencing mainly from drugs are bad things) is that just just block it out. Its like advertising- im not saying adverts never effect me, but the average person sees what, several hundred adverts a day? 99% of them they just ignore.
I remember one time in high school (several years ago) we had a policeman come in to talk to us about drugs. He actually talked to us sensibly, rather than enforcing a "drugs are evil and if you use them youll go to hell" idea.
I cant rememeber most of it, but I do remember 2 things he said: (which is pretty impressive)
a) if you want to do drugs, fine. Do NOT do heroin and cocaine. They will fuck you up.
b) Dont inhale sprays. Some girl sprayed aerosol directly into the back of her throat, and the cold caused her throat to contract and she suffocated.
So there you go. Teaching kids the IMPORTANT things, rather than blanket bombing everything you dont like.
Obviously the MPAA/RIAA cannot get "directly" into the schools, so they use Junior Achievement to get in under the guise as "business education". How much of a "bone" did they throw JA to allow this?
Second, once the school finds out what the "topic of the day" is for JA, why do they allow it at all? Unless the teachers are mindless sheep, this kind of "eduation" should not be allowed!
Concerned parents should be asking some hard questions of both the School Boards and Junior Achievement about this, because if they are not going to show both sides of the issue, they should not be there at all!
Kids are some of the sneakiest people alive. (This is not open for debate. We were all kids once.)
This is open for debate. Just because you were a sneaky kid doesn't mean that I was.
When I was a teen, there were always those adults who were hell-raisers when they were my age. They'd look at me with a 'knowing' eye and tell me that I couldn't fool them, they were a kid once.
I didn't like it then, and now, that I'm an adult, I still don't like it.
I didn't drink, smoke, or do drugs as a teen. I didn't lie to my parents or steal. I had good grades, and obeyed the law.
Stereotypes are bad, no matter who they are applied to.
You know it's too bad they don't, say, just donate the money they're spending on this program to help improve schools. I know it's a pipe dream, but I still wish I could see them donate money toward better textbooks, more teachers, smaller class sizes instead of some ridiculous program that the kids either won't understand, or already do understand and hate the MPAA anyway.
Sig!
School Principal: Well, it's been four weeks and I'd say we've done a stellar job of making Ultra Cola available to our students.
Marketdriod: Well, you might say so, and I'm sure I'd agree with you but unfortunately that won't hold up in court.
School Principal: Huh?
Marketdriod: The idea wasn't making the product available to the students. It was making the students available to the product. The Ultra Cola people say your sales aren't what they should be. You do want to make your quotas, don't you? Or the school won't get that nice big check.
The schools aren't making a lesson available to the kids.
The schools are making the kids available to the lesson.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Don't copy that floppy!
There isn't exactly a "law" that requires equal access to schools, but the FSF and CC could create a similar presentation of their views of copyright, and then complain to the media if schools aren't willing to give them equal time in front of the kids.
That was the main thing that kept this kind of group out of my high school, the fact that somebody would complain in front of the local school comittee at an otherwise quiet meeting, and therefore get a make-the-school-look-bad story in the local newspaper.
MPAA, is that the organization which represents the movie studios that are constantly copying the plots etc. of each other? The "let's make a James Bond movie with Vin Diesel and call it XxX" guys?
Bah.
What next, will they have NAMBLA come and tell the kids their interpretation of age-of-consent laws? How about letting the KKK educate the kids about how laws regarding blacks should be?
The students played roles such as ''The Film Producer," ''The Starving Artist," and were asked questions such as ''Has anyone ever copied your homework? How did this make you feel?"
Do they have one kid dress up in a suit, steal everyone's money, and drive away in a Porsche? Because we need a Jack Valenti.
--
I belive it was Noam Chomsky that said: "Education is a system of imposed ignorance"
I used to disagree...
I think a different view of this is that if a generation of children is allowed to grow up thinking that music, movies, software and anything else they can find on the Internet is there for the taking we are looking at some fundamental changes in both our way of life and our economy. And this applies not just to the USA but to Europe, Australia and (probably) Japan as well.
For example, what use is there in having a library when all books are free? Why would anyone donate books to a library or check off a box when the vote to fund a library with more tax dollars? Assuming the library actually pays for their books, music, art and so on, wouldn't we have a generation of people just thinking that was stupid?
Folks talk about how buying music is funding an obsolete distribution model and nothing really goes to the artist. Fine - if you have a high-speed Internet connection, maybe you can make the decision to "only download" music and never buy another CD. What if you don't have that connection? What about the folks that need to spend that $50 a month on food rather than the Internet? There are still a large number of people (more than 50% in the US I believe) that do not have access to the Internet at all at home or work. Sure, they can go to the library - but I thought we were closing the libraries as obsolete anyway.
I think there are a lot of issues here before it can be assumed that physical distribution is obsolete.
Anyway, if we aren't to raise an entire generation thinking that anything that can be distributed digitally should be free, then it makes sense that eventually all industry groups associated with anything covered by copyright will be promoting their cause in schools and anywhere else they can get a forum. This is their last hope for the future, folks. If they cannot succeed in convincing people that their ownership/property rights/copyright/whatever means something then we need to start figuring out what the effects are going to be and how to deal with them right now. All I've seen here is the blanket assumption that
- There will be no serious effects
- Artists will be compensated, somehow.
- Creative works will still get made for the joy of doing it, not for some dirty profit.
- Maybe there will be no effects at all...
I think we need to think this through a lot more before deciding this. The potential consequences are there and some discussion of how to adapt is worthwhile.And in 2 generations its heresy to say it used to be round.. The MPAA isn't the only organization doing this. So much of our history and future concepts of right and wrong are being perverted by teachings to the children. They are in it for the long haul.. and we must all be always diligent to teach our children the real truth..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
To quote JA:
"Tell what you liked, didn't like, would like to see more or less of, whatever is on your mind."
Guestbook here.
Anyway, I don't see anything new here at all. Yeah, there's way too much corporate influence in the classroom - so let's talk about all those schools that have replaced milk machines and cafeteria lines with soda and sandwich vending machines and made the Nike swoosh part of their campus decor.
When I was in the sixth grade I was grounded from recesses for weeks because I started a petition for longer recesses. an innocent bit of play snowballed within a day and soon there were dozens of handwritten copies of my petition circulating in classrooms. When they found out it was me who started it, rather than take the opportunity to demonstrate real world governenace, I instead got a lecture and made to write something stupid like "I will not create disturbances in class." Which, ironically, means I really did get a lesson in the real world - unfortunately, not the real world as we had been told in the classroom (petitioning the government, speaking out, etc). Obviously this real lesson had a lasting effect on me, as I still can't remember what it was I was supposed to write but the message sent still rings clear 30 years later: don't try to buck the man or you'll get stepped upon.
This program is certain to spawn a new generation of adults with similar memories. Indoctrination of this sort is doomed to fail as soon as the child begins to realize she can think for herself.
Now, getting back to those school lunches and corporate sports programs...
What's the diff in having 3 friends that swap movies off HBO or 3 Billion friends swapping some AC/DC albums?
2,999,999,997 people.
*snicker*
"The success is measured in how many kids did learn from it."
A *LOT* of kids learned from DARE. They just didn't learn the lesson their teachers and the police expected. The course may be diffrent now, but back when I was an elementary and middle-school student (10-15 years ago), the emphasis was on shocking the kids into obedience, not giving them real information. The first lesson we learned was that drugs will mess you up, destroy your life, and eventually kill you. Then we had friends who smoked a little weed and didn't get addicted, messed up, or killed. Then we learned the real lesson of DARE: Our teachers, our school principals, the police, Nancy Reagan, and that girl on TV with the frying pan lied to us all through our childhood.
0 1 - just my two bits
I remember when I was growing up back in the late 50s, we had several industry group sponosored programs.
My favorites were:
How to be Kool! - sponsored by RJ Renolds and the tobacco industry.
Never drink on an empty stomach - sponsored by by the Johnny Walker company and the spirit distillers lobby.
Hell, I rember my grandpa talking about the sheet music industry going schoolhouse to schoolhouse talking about the evils of the player piano. Said it was a deamon straight from hell playing that music and by even listening to it, they were going straight to hell.
When my kids were growing up, they started piping in Channel One which meant a less subtle hidden commercials for Snickers and Pepsi. They are now pushing 300lbs each.
My grandkids now need to deal with this crap!
At least when I went though the indoctrination programs we got government sponsored cigarettes and whiskey. What do kids get today? Aside from the threat of totalitarianism and re-education camps.
Wait isn't education suppose to be about teaching students the basic skills of living? I agree that the theft of music etc. is excessive.
Except...
a)there is evidence that theft of music has a minimal negative effect, and might even have a possitive effect.
b)companies should not have the right to engage in vigilanty justice.
c)companies should Not dictate to our education system.
d)the statement that theft of music will lead to a world w/out music is the most ridiculous lie I've ever heard.
What happened to the three R's?
Reading, 'Riting, Ripping
hehehe.
Shick's Law: There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
All the more reason parents need to take the initiative and teach their own children about this sort of thing before the schools brainwash them.
I'm just not going to worry.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
coke parody - this is a parody of the MPAA actions in schools. Rather funny, once you read it all.
I have this horrifically produced avi on CD where the SPA (? the software equivalent to RIAA/MPAA) made a moral parable hip hop rap "don't copy that floppy" so kids in school wouldn't copy oregon trail (or the like) and play it at home...
.. almost as amusing as those clips mpaa sponsored theatrical trailers where the set designers try to say how piracy hurts them the little guy...
very amusing
*Shrug* I should divx that and put it up somewhere... (they actualy give you permission to redistribute THAT PSA turd ironically enough...)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
The only reason people think so much about the music and movies that have a price tag is because they are heard over and over and over again on public air waves. Up until the mid 80s there was a law that required a percentage of the content that traveled over public air waves to be non-commercial and public. How much free movie and music content do we see comming over our public air waves? None. It's time to get laws passed that reclaims the publics stake in public airwaves. How about 51% of the airwaves be used for public domain artists and movie makers. It's a good start. It raises the question why public airwaves are used for commercial use at all. Commercial content can be accessed via the internet. If poor people watch commercial TV because they can't afford broadband that should tell us something about why they are having problems prospering. Right now I'm picturing a national garage band TV channel run by an administrative mechanisim based on a network of colleges. cow
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
From the article:
At the end of the school year, students are asked to write an essay ''to get the word out that downloading copyrighted entertainment is illegal and unethical," according to the teachers' guide.
From my memory a piece of history of totalitarian: back in the communist era, we have been indoctrined in schools on many subjects. We wrote assays on how perfect socialism is, and how evil and illegal capitalism is, and what a genius a local party leader was or how soviet heros were heroical for many times every year then, also according teachers' guide.
An ideal of ethics in school was the "Moral Codex of the Communist". But it works only up to age of ten or so. Teenagers did not take it. We had a czech folk proverb in the darkest age: "Who does not steal at every hour, steals from himself and his family (Kdo nekrade kazdou hodinu, okrada sebe a svoji rodinu)."
Finally, at the end of era (1989), including party leaders no one believed any of official propaganda.
Today, all that ideology and ethics of a "real socialism" is gone. I guess, nor the Hollywood will last forever. Human is a very adaptable and inteligent animal. Every historic attempt to herd it consistently for long time has failed dramatically.
There you are, staring at me again.
As someone who lived basically the same life, I have one word for you: BOOOOOOOOO-RIIIIIIIIIIIING!
I spent my whole childhood thinking that rules were there for a reason. Rules were there to protect us, to keep us safe from terrible dangers, and to keep us working towards becoming the best people we could possibly be. To me, rule-breakers were slime. They were worse than slime. They were violating the Great Social Contract that kept everyone from setting fire to old ladies and blowing up kittens.
After high school, I joined the Army. Learning a whole new and intricate set of rules was an interesting experience. I followed the rules dutifully, but ninety percent of the rules governing soldiers in Basic Training are there solely for the purpose of teaching the soldiers to obey without questioning. The need for that obedience is understandable in some situations. The military is just one of those places where sometimes lives depend on swift, coordinated action.
But in the end, I realized that sometimes the rules were wrong, arbitrary, self-serving, or simply lacking in coherence. Sometimes the process by which the rules are made exhibits the same flaws. Enforcement was either non-existent or arbitrary, and breaking them was more than merely harmless; sometimes it was the only way to get things done.
About the same time, I was becoming aware of the effects of being raised in an extremely rule-oriented religion.
Unquestioning obedience is fine for four year olds. But as soon as possible, kids need to be given explanations for the rules, to the best of their ability to understand. If they don't learn the difference between good rules* and bad rules**, then we're all doomed. The whole democracy thing doesn't work if everyone just does what they're told.
I worry almost as much for the kids who follow the rules compulsively, and are afraid to do anything without explicit permission, as I do for the ones who go around vandalizing and stealing out of boredom. I like the kids who creatively push the limits, game the system, and question those who wield power over them. Especially if they show some level of judgment about the actions that will do real damage, as opposed to the ones that merely make things more interesting.
* Don't set fire to old ladies. Never give your passwords out.
** You must request permission to go to the bathroom, and be back in precisely three minutes.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Interesting points but I didn't see in the parent's post any mention of following the rules "compulsively" or being afraid to do anything without "explicit permission". I for one followed the rules more or less coincidentally. I didn't smoke or drink or do drugs because I didn't see the point, or maybe because I wanted to be unique ... or maybe because I was chicken. Not because of rules.
A little off topic I guess ...
Kevin
Upon further reading, I realized that they did teach the kids a usable skill...
They tought a room full of kids who have never downloaded anything how to pirate. The even used a manual. Leave it to the entertainment industry to teach what they are trying to control.Oh well, nothing to see here...
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
On this propoganda piece, get them to send you the stuff, then turn it around on them, show how they were trying to use and abuse the kids (examples such as mnemonics used as a conditioning agent, using imagery to invoke an emotional reaction not in line with reality,use of word "piracy", leaving out the fact they have been busted and convicted many times for payola bribery, collusion industry wide to fix prices at obscene profit levels, abuse of the artists with loan programs based on unreasonable expectations and skewed projections, etc) in the program. Take that phrase "if you haven't paid you've stolen it". Bring up the example of the library, where copyrighted material is freely shared to as many who want to share in it, yet the book was paid for only once, etc.
Bring up how the movie and recorded audio industry have no qualms over using the very latest technology to make their copies of copies cheaper to them, while they can still sell them at the older prices that reflected higher production costs, but now they want to have a monopoly on technology, how they don't want YOU as the end user consumer to be able to make use of modern technology.
And stuff like that there, give em a dose of healthy skepticism towards the self serving interests of pure profits above all else crowd and why the predatory model of business should be avoided.
See, to me anyway, there's 3 business modalities, there isn't just one "business". The list: "Business-neutral" (more or less the norm how most businesses work in, neither highly predatory nor entirely honest or fair at all times),
"Business-predatory" ethically challeneged, morally abysmal, "anything goes",the only thing that matters is profits, no matter what actions are taken, as long as you can get away with it, "greed is good" philosophy, etc
Then there's "Business-'class act'"-non gouging, honest, real fair prices that follow advances in productivity,no scandals, always above board and ethical, etc.
should be some *interesting* discussions along those lines if specific businesses and corporations, etc are topics
Well, I'll admit it's no longer fashionable, but many people still at least try to keep up the pretenses of neutrality rather than blatantly admitting that they're trying to indoctrinate students with a particular opinion.
You are correct though that less overtly it happens a lot. Seems to happen in both "conservative" and "liberal" areas, though the "liberal" ones seem to be worse: lots of classes in Women's Studies departments on abortion, for example, start with the assumption that abortion is fully moral and a right. No reading of material from both sides or any of that old-fashioned nonsense.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Many of the "Founding Fathers" - Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Paine, Franklin, and Madison, to name a few - were Deists, Unitarians, or in some other way explictly disagreed with Christian dogma.
They rejected certain popular Christian dogma, true. But is what they rejected defining of what you would consider Christianity? In the most generic sense, Christianity means a follower of Christ or his teachings. Deists, Unitarians (as opposed to Trinitarians), etc are all generally considered to be Christians by modern definition.
The "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" with Tripoli, written duing the Washington administration, states that "the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
True, though again, that depends upon your definition of "Christianity". Using the broad definition, there is sufficient evidence contrary to that statement throughout all early writings, including the Declaration of Independence and writings pertaining to the Constitution (cf. "denominations" as opposed to "religion"). If we are to assume that they did not lie in this treaty, then I would suggest that their definition of "Christian" was indeed limited to a very specific sect of the followers of Christ or the Bible.
Fortunately, we have a constitution that makes it clear that it is not the state's job to judge the truth or falsity of the proposition "God exists".
While I agree with you that that is not the state's job (though the state does a lot that I don't think is its job), I think you are indirectly referring to the First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
We must be careful to understand what all these terms mean. As with "Christianity", people have widely varied ideas of "religion" and "establishment", as well as "freedom of speech", etc.
I do not think it is quite as plain as you imply.
e.g. I certainly don't want anyone to be forced to be Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus or Taoists or Animists or Totemists, etc. But religion is a complicated notion, encompassing morality and human behavior and norms. What exactly is it and how do we isolate it such that we do not create another religion by isolating it?
I just called my little brother up and told him to IMMEDIATELY let me know if they start anything like that at his school. I told him why what they are doing is wrong (he didn't see a problem with a company paying to have their corporate interests taught as lesson in school), and that I would give him a list of questions/topics to bring up in class if they tried to push any of this stuff on him.
So what sorts of questions/comments would you guys bring up if you were in this class, if you wanted to poke holes in it and rally the class behind you?
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