From that same essay I just posted about below, here is another excerpt which I DO actually like, although it’s immediately followed by more stuff I don’t like. Anyway, here’s the good bit:

Why are people allowed to be brought up in this credulous aura of Hellenistic superstition? The reason is that political and religious institutions know that skepticism is dangerous. If we teach everybody in high school the habit of being skeptical, they will not restrict their skepticism to spirits and mediums but will question politicians, advertising and the whole ethos of marketing, the false science put out by commercial companies, and received religions. That will not do!

I don’t necessarily agree with his basic premise, that religion is superstition and hence basically worthless. I think he’s got a pretty poor grasp of the human unconscious and the mind’s need to understand unconscious contents according to some sort of system. I do, however, like the basic idea that we should teach kids how to be skeptical of information sources and their agendas. The best (academic) teacher I ever had in highschool was all about instilling that sort of thing in us. On the first day of class, he took our textbook, declared it was “bullshit” and threw it across the room. And then he spent the rest of the year leading us in our own pursuit of how to mentally throw books across rooms.