Why is it that Children in our Schools are not Permitted to Read the Bible and Men in our Prisons Can?

(I heard this question posed on local news channel)

Because our country is not a theocracy; there is separation of church and state, or so the Constitution says.

Because children are, by definition, not responsible adults and so cannot separate fact from superstition.

Because schools are not prisons.

Because if they were "permitted to read" one bible, why not all? The Christian bible, which I assume we are referring to, is only one of many. Why should we prefer that one?

Because, since this is primarily a Christian country, children would not merely "read" the Christian bible, they would be (and are) subjected to pressure to believe it. Why should they be Christians and not Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Taoists, Buddhists... etc., all religions with millions of followers just as zealous and certain of the correctness of their faiths as Christians? Not to mention the hundreds of faiths with less than, say, hundreds of millions of followers... in Utah, for example, they would be (and are) pressured to be Mormons, and to "read" (i.e., to believe) the Book of Mormon, their bible. Should they be "permitted" to do so in state-sponsored schools?

If you want your child to be schooled in one of the multitudes of faiths presently existing, send that child to the appropriate religious school; there are thousands of them. There they will learn that the particular set of beliefs taught in that school is the only correct one, and that all the rest of humanity, from the dawn of time to the present, is and has been utterly wrong and misguided in their beliefs, and is most likely burning in some version of hell. Am I exaggerating? No, I don't think so. Just tune in to any southern religious broadcast, any faith, and check it out.

This is not much of a philosophical piece, is it?