Dealing with End-of-the-Worlders

Most of us can ignore the claptrap about the world ending this December. Elementary teachers can't. Every class has at least one terrified child in it whose parents are irrational believers in the Mayan calendar hoax. Some teachers have had kids tell them their parents plan to kill the whole family beforehand. Reading that terrifies me.Teachers have some sources of help: NASA's Lunar Science Institute has published a Cosmophobia page with a recording of a panel discussion, "Doomsday 2012 and Cosmophobia," from the August 7 meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. And Astronomy Education Review has published an annotated guide to resources for responding to the hoax. (I have the Planetary Exploration Newsletter to thank for pointing me to these.)