Robert Byers writes:
The state can't say its neutral on religion and then teach its false.
When a given religious group makes assertions that conflict directly with observable evidence, and insists on belief in these assertions as a condition for membership, it's unavoidable that a proper, objective education must lead successful students to the conclusion that the given religious group is wrong in their assertions, and that the students are better off not being members of that group. Students who don't reach this conclusion are not successful -- i.e. they fail.
(We're talking here about assertions such as denying the genetic relationship of common ancestry among all primates, including humans, among all mammals, including humans, and so on.)
Since such a religious group has no basis for its counterfactual beliefs other than choosing to adopt a particular interpretation (of some translation) of a chosen "sacred text", it is really the group's own fault that their conditions for membership are incompatible with a proper and objective education.
As we know, many religious groups make different assertions, which don't conflict with observable evidence, yet are based on (the same translation of) the same "sacred text" -- the difference is that they've chosen to interpret the text in a way that acknowledges and accommodates reality.
The public schools, which are obligated to provide proper, objective education to all attending students, don't create any conflict with these latter religious groups. Conflict with groups of the former type are inescapable, but the former type of religious group has an intrinsic conflict with reality; public schooling is not the only problem these people will face in life.
The state accommodates home schooling for those adherents who choose to "protect" their children from factual information, even though this works to the detriment of these children and the community and nation at large. If you, as a US citizen, really are firm in your insistence on denying reality, you should count yourself lucky that you live in a country where the government does not require you to accept reality, and even allows you to hide reality from your children for as long as your children can stand it.
autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.