Science teacher fired in Ohio: Burned crosses onto students' arms

Tiassa

Tiassa

Let us not launch the boat ...
Valued Senior Member
Source: Columbus Dispatch
Link: http://www.columbusdispatch.com/liv.../20/mtvernon.ART_ART_06-20-08_B1_R2AHRH3.html
Title: "Science teacher dissed evolution", by Alayna DeMartini
Date: June 20, 2008

In a bizarre case out of Ohio, a science teacher has been fired after a unanimous vote by the board of Mount Vernon City Schools. John Freshwater is accused of teaching creationism and promoting religion in his science classes, but the final straw may have come when he used an electrostatic device to burn crosses onto students' arms.

A Mount Vernon teacher undermined science instruction in the public school district by discrediting evolution in his classroom and focusing on creationism and intelligent design, an investigation has found.

Eighth-graders who were taught by John Freshwater frequently had to be re-taught in high school what they were supposed to have learned in Freshwater's class, according to outside investigators hired by the district.

For 11 years, other teachers in the school district and people in the community complained about Freshwater preaching his Christian beliefs in class and slamming scientific theories, a school administrator told investigators.

"There is a significant amount of evidence that Mr. Freshwater's teachings regarding subjects related to evolution were not consistent with the curriculum of the Mount Vernon City Schools and state standards," the consultants reported.

Freshwater was told to stop teaching intelligent design and creationism, but he continued, the report found.

(Demartini)
Click to expand...

The investigative report by a private human resources firm confirmed that Freshwater burned crosses onto students' arms with an electrostatic device last year. Although the teacher told investigators the marks were Xs, and not crosses, at least one photograph suggests otherwise.


Not an X: One of the marks burned onto a student's arm by
Mount Vernon, Ohio science teacher John Freshwater.
(via Columbus Dispatch)​

The report (.PDF) accuses Mr. Freshwater of a range of problematic behaviors, among them:

• Burning crosses onto children's arms, causing some pain.
• Displaying the Ten Commandments in the classroom.
• Teaching his own religious beliefs in the classroom.
• Giving Bibles to FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) members to distribute to other students.​

The report also suggests (pg. 4) that Mr. Freshwater attempted to deceive investigators:

Documents that a parent of a former student said were handed out by Mr. Freshwater in his 2003 science class titled, "Dragon History", "Dinosaur Fossils—Age Old Debate" and "Dinosaur Extinction". Note that the copy of "Dragon History" and the copy of "Dinosaur Extinction" that were available for review in the meeting with Dr. Weston and the two representatives of the science department had portions of each document deleted. A former student had a copy of the "Dinosaur Extinction" handout she received from Mr. Freshwater that included the full document with references to God and the Bile in the parts that had been deleted ....

(Herlevi and Herlevi)
Click to expand...

One of the handouts students received in 2006, "Darwin's Theory of Evolution—The Premise and the Problem", apparently came from All About God Ministries. The list goes on. One news report—from the Mount Vernon News—suggests that Freshwater invited a speaker who told students in the FCA to break the law in order to further their own religion.

Makes you wonder when the Ben Stein will make the movie in his defense.

Freshwater is not without his supporters. Dave Daubenmire, a friend, told the Associated Press that, "With the exception of the cross-burning episode", he believes Freshwater's teaching reflects the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district. Obviously, this doesn't cover all the parents, since the district faces at least one laswsuit regarding the matter, and a school board meeting in May heard speakers from a large crowd divided about Freshwater's behavior. The local Minutemen United chapter threatened to recall the school board if it did not provide answers by a given deadline that passed before the investigative report was finished, and protested the school district over a directive that Freshwater remove a Bible from public view on his desk. And in April, students at Mount Vernon's middle and high schools staged their own protest on the same grounds.

One student, a high school senior who led the April protest, told reporters, "Like him, we're expressing our First Amendment rights. He has the right to express his religion. We have the right to assemble."

And this strikes at the heart of the problem. There is a difference between citizens expressing themselves and authority figures sanctioned by the state injecting personal religious beliefs into a science classroom. Perhaps the Bible on Freshwater's desk would not have been an issue had he not a history of circulating religious material as part of the class curriculum, or kept twenty copies of a book called The Story of God in the classroom. It is not his right to preach against homosexuality on religious grounds in a classroom; this sort of behavior invites the very scrutiny that the local Minutemen United protested in May, or the students in April. And if burning crosses onto students' flesh isn't as close to an engraved invitation for disciplinary action as one can get without a trip to a printer's shop, I'm not sure what is.

It's like that bumper sticker: Jesus, save us ... from your followers.
_____________________

Notes:

Herlevi, Thomas J. and Julia F Herlevi. "Mount Vernon City Schools Independent Investigation of a Compaint Regarding John Freshwater". HR On Call. June 19, 2008. http://www.dispatch.com/wwwexportcontent/sites/dispatch/local_news/stories/2008/06/19/Freshwater.pdf

Whiteman, Doug. "Ohio board votes to ax teacher accused of branding". Associated Press. June 20, 2008. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g1SluWTuZ9ddhhJI06SSqutTwstgD91E6U3O0

Demartini, Alayna. "Students support teacher by taking Bibles to school". Columbus Dispatch. April 18, 2008. http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/04/18/bible2.html

See Also:

Schehl, Pamela. "Lawsuit filed against school, teacher". Mount Vernon News. June 17, 2008. http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/08/06/17/freshwater_upd.html

—————. "Group repeats demand for answer to Bible question". Mount Vernon News. May 29, 2008. http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/08/05/29/freshwater_upd.html

—————. "Large crowd addresses MV school board". Mount Vernon News. May 13, 2008. http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/08/05/13/freshwater_upd.html

—————. "Group stages protest outside of offices". Mount Vernon News. May 28, 2008. http://www.mountvernonnews.com/local/08/05/28/freshwater_upd.html
 
Men in white overcoats, jacket, ambulance, hospital, psych ward, padded cell, done. If he's lucky he'll get to meet JC there in person.

Next.
 
Tiassa said:
And this strikes at the heart of the problem. There is a difference between citizens expressing themselves and authority figures sanctioned by the state injecting personal religious beliefs into a science classroom.
Click to expand...
I get the sense this guy was a loon and I don't like religion being taught in the classroom. That said...
I got a lot of beliefs presented to me and shoved toward if not always successfully into my brain by teachers, none of whom I could claim crossed the state religion separation line.
Are other beliefs OK as long as they do not fit a particular relgion?
What is a religious belief?
Would it be OK for a strong determinist to tell children the future is already determined? (for example) One could make a good case that this viewpoint is backed up by science. Nevertheless it shares many qualities with what would be considered a religious belief.
I am often told that certain beliefs are metaphysics and therefore have crossed the above mention line and are no nos. But it seems to me everyone holds metaphysical beliefs, even if they are not connected to a specific church and do not belief in God.
A fairly easy area to make this case would be aruond ethics. Pretty much every school presents children with what is good and what is bad behavior and even attitudes. Perhaps one or two teachers might think while doing this that 'I am being practical and aligning this child with society at large' but most believe that there is objective good and bad. This is a metaphysical belief. Let alone the contradictory specifics children will face.

No one in my public school education tried to teach me creationism. But there was a wide range of beliefs presented to me - some political, some metaphysical, some ethical, some psychological - that I now disagree with, or I now agree with but recognize that these are beliefs that are based on faith (or intuition or 'common sense').

For the same reasons that I am concerned about the separation of church and state in education I am concerned about a wide range of shoving ideas into children's brains. In fact isn't this really a big part of the issue.

I am surprised how few people who are concerned about the separation of church and state are concerned about the shoving into the brains pedagogy in general.
 
First, if there was such a problem with his methods, how did he last 11 years? From the article you get the impression that this guy has been a substandard teacher the entire time, and yet nobody investigated the matter? That bothers me.

Second, the issue with teaching creationism is science class is simple. Anything that enters any science textbook first has to undergo rigorous peer reviews in journals of record before it's even accepted (or rejected) by the scientific community. Creationists want to circumvent that very important step in the process to get their stuff in textbooks, and I'm sorry, but that's just not cool. And I'm not just picking on Creationism, either. ANY scientific theory should have to go through the process before it's ever considered for the curriculum.
 
They say indoctrination is a misnomer but to allow someone to burn a cross unto your arm. That takes some serious sermonizing. What could he have possibly said to convince students to let him do that?
 
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