Is it good to believe in belief?

johnson1010 · Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:53 am

This article really drives me nuts.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/clau ... OuuFceLfkN

Why do people think it's such a great idea to believe in belief?

Most people don't really know what their religion is really about. What the bible says, if their preachers are strict followers or liberal interpreters, whether the bible REALLY says anything about gay people, or even in what context a word like "abomination" can be translated.

But it goes beyond just religion. It extends to authority figures at work, in the government, and at home.

Don't question. Do as you are told. You don't know better than those in charge, so don't even attempt to get hold of your own life. You are property, and you had better behave that way. Don't get above your raisin's, and don't be uppity.

But absurdly, it extends past even those extremes. Ghost stories, UFO's loch-ness monster, big foot, the jersey devil, and apparently, you do NOT tell the truth about santa clause.

This is really mind blowing. At least Santa Clase is one everybody knows for certain isn't real. They KNOW IT. and they know that you can't lie to kids forever to perpetuate this fraud.

And what's so great about telling kids lies? What's so great about getting them all wrapped up in this non-sense just to pop their bubbles later? What is special about THIS lie, that makes it so sacrosanct?

It's a primer for belief without reason. It's a primer for getting kids to believe in belief.


	Quote: Even the Grinch wouldn’t be this mean. A sourpuss teacher in Rockland County ruined Christmas for a class full of second-graders this week, when she told them that there is no Santa Claus during a lesson about the North Pole. The evil educator even told the youngsters — mostly 7- and 8-year-olds — that the presents under their trees were put out by their parents, and not St. Nick.

Look at this bullshit.

Ruined christmas? So now that orgiastic, debt-building, callous, spectacle of frivolous spending is ruined?

This teacher is facing real blow-back for telling the truth. For EDUCATING children, which i was under the impression was actually in her job description. You want to pile on misery for this woman by actually calling her "evil"? Are you serious? So, what, she should be fired? Rail-roaded out of town? never hold a job as an educator again because she refused to perpetuate a known, intentional LIE?

Is SHE mean? or are these crazed, hyperbolic parents, and freaking NEWS PAPERS who are giving this an airing mean? Should she be ruined for this? Are you serious?!


	Quote: The stunning Scrooge-like behavior has caused a blizzard of outrage at the quiet George W. Miller Elementary School in Nanuet, where angry parents would like to see the teacher roasted like a chestnut over an open fire.


	Quote: “If her brothers told her [there was no Santa], they would be punished. So I can’t imagine what should happen to the teacher.”

How about an "atta girl"? What DO you think should happen to the teacher?


	Quote: “It’s outrageous that a teacher would strip a child of their innocence and try and demystify something,” said Margaret Fernandez, 59. A grandmother of a kindergartner said, “I think this is awful. “If it happened to my granddaughter, I’d tell her her teacher made a mistake, and there is a Santa,” she added.

Is it outrageous that a teacher would try to demystify something? Isn't that EXACTLY what teachers are meant to do? Doesn't demystifying something enable people to live and thrive? Or should we all still be blaming diseases on demons and drilling holes in people's heads to let out the demons causing mental illnesses?


	Quote: One Christmas official was commenting on the record yesterday — Santa himself! “When I read what happened at the school, I had an opinion that I don’t feel would be printable,” said a still-jolly St. Nick, who was posing for pictures with kids at the Palisades Mall. “I do feel it is unfortunate that this teacher has lost the spirit of Christmas in her heart. “It is important to keep that spirit alive so that Santa can be real for everyone.”

Why does santa have to be real for anyone? What value does it add? Really? Why are presents from a judgemental stranger who can watch you while you pee more meaningful than acknowledging the effort and generosity of the real people who spent hard earned resources on you?


	Quote: “The most real things in the world are things that you don’t see or touch,” she added, “and they are the things that mean the most — love, kindness and generosity.”

Really? Try surviving a car crash with "love and generosity". Did it stop the steering column from collapsing your chest?

and besides, love, kindness and generosity are things you feel and can touch. The evidence of them are all around you. And acknowledging the sacrifice of the people who went out of their way to shower you with the excess demanded of us at christmas could USE your love and kindness in return. They would feel good knowing you appreciate that they sacrificed some of their own for you, even if you don't like the cheap, mold-stamped, forgetable, plastic trinkets we convinced ourselves to splurge on.

For the record, i volunteer to be Scrooge. Santa can pack christmas back into his bag, stuff it up his ass, and drown under an iceberg. (it's funny, i came in here to edit this and take it down a notch. Success? you decide.)

There, now i can never get a job teaching.

Dave The Marine · Sun Dec 04, 2011 11:39 pm

Side stepping your question about belief and going straight to the teacher/santa claus deal, first it maybe the teachers job to teach but she has a sylibus and I am quite sure that exposing Santa as a fraud was not one of things on the sylibus. At any rate, what kind of a teacher would do this? I think a teacher that was having a bad day would do this, learning is the least likely reason and more likely ones would be the principal pissed her off or Bobby's mom cut her off coming into the parking lot. There is a time and a place for the discussion of everything and that was neither the time or the place for that discussion, and the teacher was not the one who should be having the discussion. Santa Claus is a tradition (and there is nothing inherently wrong with it), that said I always told my kids that I was Santa, they of course thought I was a liar, but as it turned out I was the only one telling the truth. Thus it was a perfect opprotunity to talk about rhetoric and the fallacy of the majority.

This said I don't think the teacher should be fired (she caused no long term damage, and as a parent I would drag out my copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me, and show some cases where she had lied before) I could do this without commenting on whether she was lying in this case and let them draw their own conclusions, understanding full well at some point they would realize she wasn't lying in this case.

Bottom line she wasn't trying to be a good teacher, she was just being (and I had several during my schooling) an evil old bitch. She shouldn't be fired but she should be reprimanded and she does owe an apology to the parents and the children for her poor behavior. So you decide what kind of a teacher would do this my guess is a bad one, one that probably needs to be fired, but not for this reason, My guess a little look see into her class would reaveal other objectional things that are far more serious then Santa Claus.

Robert Tulip · Mon Dec 05, 2011 4:57 am

Belief in belief is the ground of human construction of identity and community and meaning.

Americans have lost belief in everything except the patron saint of capitalism, Santa Claus.

Santa is the new God of consumerism. Teaching disbelief in Santa is like teaching disbelief in Coca-Cola, or Pepsi.

Community is impossible without myth. People are too stupid for facts. They require the ideals of the society to be packaged in an emotionally friendly way, like with elves and the North Pole, and maybe a supersonic sonar sleigh to deliver presents.

Santa is celebrated at the winter solstice, when the days start to get longer again after the declining light of autumn. The solstice looks forward to Easter, three months later, when days are longer than nights. In both, capitalism insists on replacing Christ, by Santa at Christmas and by eggs at Easter.

We cannot escape the cycle of the year. Efforts to construct a supposedly rational scientific cosmology, in a way that ignores the annual cycle, founder on the need to recognize the seasons at the basis of life. Santa trumps Einstein.

But Santa has a new tweak; like the ghost who walks, the man who never dies, the Phantom, Santa is outside the mundane cycle of life and death, in the imaginary realm of mythic eternal fantasy. And yet, he embodies the deepest sense of meaning and purpose of the society of true believers, that the pursuit of happiness is served by material consumption. Beyond death, Santa is the same yesterday today and forever. At least Jesus had the grace to die.

Just as Egyptians saw Horus as born at Christmas, and just as Jesus usurped the place of Horus and the other dying and rising Gods, Santa is the new cosmic framework, a divinity worshiped as embodying the highest ideals of the society. As George Walker Bush Jr said after the twin towers fell on 9/11, just spend money. Santa will save you.

Dexter · Mon Dec 05, 2011 6:30 am


	Dave The Marine wrote: Bottom line she wasn't trying to be a good teacher, she was just being (and I had several during my schooling) an evil old bitch. She shouldn't be fired but she should be reprimanded and she does owe an apology to the parents and the children for her poor behavior. So you decide what kind of a teacher would do this my guess is a bad one, one that probably needs to be fired, but not for this reason, My guess a little look see into her class would reaveal other objectional things that are far more serious then Santa Claus.

But the article said,


	Quote: The unidentified teacher reportedly made her anti-Santa comments Tuesday during a geography lesson, when students told her that they knew where the North Pole was because that’s where Santa lives.

I understand there is a silly norm when it comes to Santa, but is she supposed to reinforce fake geography in the classroom? If she had a few minutes to think about it, maybe she would have deflected the question, but the outrage is ridiculous.

The parents are acting pretty foolish, and have just given up any standing to complain about lies their teachers are telling.

So then, later on (4th grade? 5th? not sure) you're supposed to say, "remember that time I tried to get your teacher fired. Yeah, she was right after all. Sorry about that."

Interbane · Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:25 pm


	Dave wrote: Santa Claus is a tradition (and there is nothing inherently wrong with it), that said I always told my kids that I was Santa, they of course thought I was a liar, but as it turned out I was the only one telling the truth. Thus it was a perfect opprotunity to talk about rhetoric and the fallacy of the majority.

I like that, and I think I'll do that. I've always enjoyed Christmas too much to not celebrate it. I don't remember ever having a sense of the ad populum fallacy from learning that Santa wasn't real, but it was always the example that reinforced the fallacy. I can make it a bit more direct for my kids, without ruining the holidays.

LevV · Mon Dec 05, 2011 6:01 pm

As a teacher, for me the saddest part of this story is the teacher not seeing the power of the myth to support her lesson. She’s teaching a geography lesson about the north pole and the students tell her what they know about it – Santa Claus lives there!.
What a great introduction to the lesson. You have input from the students and Santa, probably the most exciting character in the imaginative lives of children at that age.

A good teacher would take what the students already know and run with it. She might ask a student to show on a map or globe where the fat dude has his workshop. This could be followed up with students tracing the route from the Pole to their house, followed up with outline map activities, written directions etc. They won’t forget the geographical names and terms when they’re learning in this state of high interest.

If she has concerns about the students’ living in this make-believe world, she could always introduce logistical questions about time and space e.g. how many houses are there in your town, city, state? How long would it take Santa to ……….The point here is not to provide any answers (and get in trouble with parents) but to get the students thinking logically. Those who are developmentally ready will question, those who are not will live in the Santa world a little longer. And what’s the harm in that?

johnson1010 · Mon Dec 05, 2011 8:59 pm

Think about this, though.

What is it, do you imagine, kids are upset about when they learn there is no santa clause?

To a six year old, everything is new. everything is magic. Santa is no more miraculous a story than baking a cake with mom.

What is it that upsets them? How about that you are telling them that their parents are wrong, or have been lying to them. That's what confuses and hurts them. That's what shakes them. My parents have been lying to me. And why?

Really. See if you can answer that. Why?

My wife has a friend who's children asked her about the truth of santa together at 3 and 5 respectively. She confessed that it was true. Santa doesn't exist.

No blow up, but the 5 year old did lecture her on why it was wrong to lie to people.

tat tvam asi · Fri Dec 16, 2011 2:08 pm

It's funny, my parents always told us that Santa is just make believe for fun and that it's mom's and dad's and relatives who get the presents. The reasoning was that they didn't want us to get confused between make believe like Santa, and true reality like God. lol

That one really backfired all in good time...

youkrst · Tue Feb 14, 2012 10:29 pm


	johnson1010 wrote: Santa can pack christmas back into his bag, stuff it up his ass, and drown under an iceberg.


	Robert Tulip wrote: Santa is the new God of consumerism... ...at least Jesus had the good grace to die


	Dexter wrote: "remember that time I tried to get your teacher fired. Yeah, she was right after all. Sorry about that."


	johnson1010 wrote: but the 5 year old did lecture her on why it was wrong to lie to people.

awwww cute :lol:


	tat tvam asi wrote: That one really backfired all in good time...

classic thread, very enjoyable read.

Rajesh · Tue Feb 14, 2012 11:05 pm

What else is expected from a science teacher ?
Should she reinforce all the superstitions and myths ?

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