Frustrated by Ignorance (what else is new?)

I hope all two of you have been entertained by my coverage of the Flying Spaghetti Monster movement - Pastafarianism. I've latched onto this because, well first because it's funny, but also because I see otherwise intelligent kids in my class every day who are being taught by their families/church that the earth is 6000 years old. I tell them that Asian hunters crossed into North America during the last Ice Age over 12,000 years ago and that the fossil rock on my desk is about 350 million years old and the kids with actual families, who feed them & take them to church, their little eyes boggle with cognitive dissonance. I explain (very briefly) the decay of Carbon 14 and how these things are determined, but I'm standing against the almighty. I wonder if the adoption of radical ideas by so many kids in college is aided by the fact that thier families fill them up with this ascientific claptrap before they get there. So useful ideas like reason, liberty, & patriotism, are tossed out when the kids reject the absurdities their parents foisted upon them. (Okay I'm definitely not getting a principal's job any time soon).