Teaching Nonsense to Children

Podblack Bog has a post telling us of a new ghost buster series in which children will be sent out to hunt for ghosts.

I took existing ghost-hunter shows with a grain of superstitous salt - just one of way too many ways in which people in this country waste their time on nonsense when they could be devoting their time and effort to real problems (like fighting real diseases such as malaria and polio).

However, to involve kids in such a show moves from the simply stupid to that which is downright wrong. The purpose of the show will teach children to believe in a nonsense that will weaken their ability to find real-world solutions to real-world problems. It will make the world a worse place than it otherwise would have been by creating a group of people who will be less capable of distinguishing between real-world solutions and myth.

Again, the sponsors, and everybody who helps to put such a show on are people who find no problem making the world a worse place in which to live as long as they can put money in their own pockets.

This deserves more than a casual roll of the eyball. This deserves our condemnation.

Leave the kids out of it.