My youngest daughter has a school math project in which she's supposed to find a way to spend a million dollars. There are rules, too. Only one house and two cars (and you can give only $10,000 to charity or the bank, hmmmm)...things like that. She's been "buying" everything from exotic monkeys to airplanes to hot tubs.

But get this: The assigment sheet, handed out to the entire class, actually has a logo from the sponsoring company. The Texas Lottery! Across the bottom of the sheet it says something to the effect of "dreams coming true."

There's something that rubs me the wrong way about this. Somehow, this is different than some soda company donating $25,000 for a playground for a couple of year's exclusive rights to have their machines around campus.

Part of me wants to talk to the teacher/administration, whatever. But then I know I'll be met with "You know those 15 Pentium 4's in the computer lab? You better get happy with the math assignment, Daddy-O. Poor public funding and tax cuts and (insert popular education political slogan here) cause us to have to go this route."

It's just an assignment, I suppose. Designed to show 4th graders "how much a million dollars really is." Couldn't the assignment be more realistic? Like, if you spend $10 per week on Lotto tickets over the course of 20 years, how much could you have in the bank at 5% interest compounded quarterly? Or, how many hundreds of thousands of people are out there against how many win a million dollars...