I just finished watching part 7 of the 7-part PBS Special on Evolution. Parts 1-6 were probably one of the best things I've watched in a long time. However, part 7 was an altogether different experience. It was titled: "What about God?".
Now, it's not that it was of a lesser quality than the other 6, it's just, well... The range of emotions I experienced went from Disbelief, Shame, Pity, Surprise, Anger, Fear, and Exasperation, with a few stops in between. It had never before been so clear to me the precise nightmare that our society is in today.

At different points in the show, there were scenes that depicted rooms full of young children and their parents signing along to a song that went something like: "I don't believe in evolution | I know creation's true", and "God created everything | and the 6 day story's true | so the Big Bang theory's just a dud | and the million years are, too". Another scene showed someone - apparently one of the 'leading activists against the lie of evolution', explaining how the flood (Noah's ark) deposited animals around the world in such a way that they were buried in mud and created fossils, only a couple thousand of years ago, with cute little diagrams too. There was a large section of the show devoted to talking about this school in Tennessee, where a group of students started a petition to get "Scientific Creation" taught in their Science Class, simultaneously with the theory of evolutionary biology. Thankfully, they didn't succeed, but they kept showing scenes of this group of students sitting around talking about how evolution is inferior to their beliefs - and frankly, much of what they said to support their "Scientific Creation" was disturbingly inaccurate...

My fear is that, in a couple of years, my Daughter is going to be starting school (okay, she's 6 months now, so it might be a while...), but there seems to be a growing number of these 'movements' and petitions to either force evolution out of school, or throw in these other things like Intelligent Design, or whatever "Scientific Creation" is supposed to be (from what I could gather, because the schools have said that they would allow any valid, scientific theory to be taught alongside evolution in science classes, Christians and other religious people have been trying to come up with some type of scientific version of the creation story that's in the bible... which essentially means they take small pieces of science that agrees with their views and throw away the rest to come up with something that does not stand up to any type of scientific testing, and try to pass it off as a theory that is just as valid as evolution).

It worries me that when she should be learning about science, and biology, and the natural world, it's either going to be completely absent from her curriculum, or, she's going to also have her head filled with this magical, feel-good, 'God loves you', nonsense, and be completely screwed when she has to think for herself on the matter.

IF they, for some reason, decide that the Christian - or any other - view of creationism should be taught in school, they should only do it in a separate, theology class, or something that has a clear distinction from "Science" vs "made up crap", and I really don't think that they should have any class where religion is the focus of study, outside of college curriculum.

Anyway, I apologize for this getting to be longer and more rant-y than I intended... I'm still kind of fuming thinking about this stuff... What I was hoping to find out is this: What steps can I start taking - and when - to help ensure that when my Daughter is in school, somewhere along the line, she is able to learn about evolution, and other science. I'm not qualified to teach it to her. Having her watch the PBS special(s) over and over is not going to help her learn about it... so where do I turn?