February 8, 1986

Star Tribune

To the Editor,

Christa McAuliffe boarded Challenger to educate America's schoolchildren. Yet the tragedy has provided an opportunity to teach a lesson even more important than the ones she envisioned, namely the reality of death.

Most of us, adults and children alike, act as if we will never die. Because television often desensitizes children to death by presenting it in a casual and impersonal way, it is appropriate that TV not only allowed Christa McAuliff to become a member of the family to the nation, but also a death in the family.

It is also appropriate that schools, where the religion of evolutionism strives for a monopoly, should be drawn into involvement, for in the materialistic view, there is no ultimate meaning to life, and death is simply the dissolution of an incredibly complex but accidental collection of molecules that somehow thinks of itself as meaningful.

It is up to teachers who are emotionally and spiritually capable of facing their own mortality to discuss these matters, on levels appropriate to maturity, with their students.

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