JISHOU, HUNAN — Public school teachers — in fact most teachers — should just shut up about their religious preferences. Proselytizing is an abuse of their “bully pulpit.”

The Panda’s Thumb has two articles this week demonstrating the misuse of teacherly authority. One is an update on the ever-continuing John Freshwater saga; the other a report on one teacher’s attempt to haul students to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Freshwater is a seventh-grade science teacher in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, who has paraded his particular brand of Christianity — and anti-evolution propaganda — in front of his students for several years. His superiors looked the other way until Freshwater used a Tesla coil to burn a cross shape on the arm of a student. The student and his parents cried foul, and the parties involved are now in a legal thicket.

Freshwater has been the subject of hours of administrative hearings regarding his continued employment. The boy and his family have filed a civil liberties suit against Freshwater and the school system. Freshwater himself has filed his own civil liberties suit against his employers, and another civil suit against the family, alleging they have slandered him.

During the administrative hearings, witnesses reported that Freshwater always had a Bible on his desk (despite his superiors telling him to remove it), maintained a stock of Bibles in a bookcase for students to borrow, had Christian-oriented posters decorating his science classroom, and made a point of teaching students that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang were bogus.

June 15th, 2009 | Tags: Bible, creation museum, David Paszkiewicz, evolution, john freshwater, proselytizing, Schools | Category: Civil liberties, Commentary, Schools, Teaching, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — It’s either her prom or your graduation, a Christian high school in Findlay, Ohio, has told Tyler Frost, 17.

If Frost goes to his girlfriend’s prom at the worldly Findlay High School, Heritage Christian School will suspend him, thereby depriving Frost of the chance to participate in his graduation ceremony. The boy, bless his little romantic heart, plans to attend his girlfriend’s prom anyway. He’s never been to a dance before.

Attaboy, Tyler!

Heritage Christian School, a Baptist torture chamber prison camp gulag school, forbids dancing, rock music, hand-holding and kissing, I guess because Jesus didn’t do that kind of worldly stuff.

I have my doubts about that. There’s that whole thing about water into wine…

Anyway, Frost followed the rules for Findlay High and got his principal’s permission to attend the bacchanalia orgy Animal House party prom.

“I expected a short lecture about making the right decisions and not doing something stupid,” Frost said. “I thought I would get his signature and that would be the end.”

[Heritage Principal Tim] England acknowledged signing the form but warned Frost there would be consequences if he attended the dance. England then took the issue to a school committee made up of church members, who decided to threaten Frost with suspension.

“In life, we constantly make decisions whether we are going to please self or please God. (Frost) chose one path, and the school committee chose the other,” England said.

May 9th, 2009 | Tags: Findlay, heritage christian, high school, john freshwater, ohio, prom, suspension, Tyler Frost | Category: Random rants, Schools, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — Yet another attempt to weasel creationism/Intelligent Design into public schools has died after an “academic freedom” bill failed to leave a subcommittee in the Iowa legislature yesterday.

The bill purportedly would have protected instructors from punishment or job loss if they presented “scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution.” In fact, it was a ploy to enable suitably minded instructors to teach creationism or ID alongside evolutionary theory. Wording that is almost identical appears on a web page sponsored by the Discovery Institute, a pro-ID “thinktank.”

Full details are at The Panda’s Thumb.

Lest you think the bill might have had merit, allow me to provide a brief introduction to “creation science.” ID is just a variation of creationism, accepting an older age of the universe.

Creationism holds that:

• The account in Genesis is literal and true.
• God created everything in six days, about 6,000 years ago.
• Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, all animals were vegetarians, death was non-existent, and predation/parasitism were unnecessary.
• God got pissed at Adam and Eve, and that wily serpent in the Tree, and cursed them with unending toil, mortality, and slithering on the ground. With the Fall, God also rebooted Creation 1.0 to introduce carnivorism, predation, parasitism and all the unhappy biological problems all His creatures now face.

March 14th, 2009 | Tags: academic freedom, bill, creationism, evolution, intelligent design, iowa, john freshwater, legislation | Category: Schools, Science, evolution, religion | Comments (2)

The Panda’s Thumb has been keeping a close tab on Ohio science teacher/religious fanatic John Freshwater even since he got into trouble last year, allegedly burning a cross on a student’s arm with a Tesla coil.

Freshwater and school officials have been making their cases in adiministrative hearings since then. There have been six days of testimony so far, spread over several months. So far, the testimony suggests Freshwater was an insubordinate teacher who resisted his superiors’ efforts to bring him in line, perhaps because he believed God’s authority trumped theirs.

Members of the science department were supposed to bring their Tesla coils to the front office; Freshwater kept his. He was supposed to remove his Bible from plain sight of students; he put additional religious materials in his classroom instead. Ohio’s scope and sequence of science instruction places the teaching of evolution in the 8th grade and later, and forbids the teaching of creationism; Freshwater was telling his seventh graders that evolution was bunk, that the world was only 6,000 years old, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed for a time.

Freshwater, who apparently is a very popular teacher and has won teaching awards in the past, is associated with rightwing Christian organizations, particularly the kind that just can’t seem to accept that old “separation of church and state” idea enshrined in the Constitution. They try to weasel their church teachings into the public schools in defiance of federal (and state) law anyway.

November 9th, 2008 | Tags: insubordination, john freshwater, religion, Science | Category: Commentary, Science, Teaching, evolution, religion | Comments (2)

John Freshwater had his first day of an administrative hearing today, to determine whether he should keep his job. The Panda’s Thumb has a detailed account, if you’re interested.

October 8th, 2008 | Tags: church/state, cross, john freshwater, tesla coil | Category: Schools, Science, Teaching, religion | Leave a comment

JISHOU, HUNAN — The border police in Berkeley, California, must have been napping. A proselytizing teacher slipped into town long enough to traumatize her class of eight-year-olds.

She told them that Harry Potter, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were ALL fictional characters, and that God was the only thing they should believe in.

Nice. And I wonder what grade she got in ed psych?

She also reportedly told her third graders that she didn’t believe in evolution or the Big Bang either. I suppose none were able to shoot back a counter-argument, since they were all in tears about the Santa Claus/Easter Bunny revelation.

The teacher, a new hire over the summer, is now being investigated by the Berkeley Unified School District for possibly (!) violating laws against the separation of Church and State. The details are here.

I’m not sure which is worse, burning a cross onto a teenager’s arm with a Tesla coil or demolishing an eight-year-old’s belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny. Is the US this desperate for teachers?

Thanks for Pharyngula for this story.

October 6th, 2008 | Tags: berkeley, creationism, God, john freshwater, santa claus | Category: Commentary, Schools, Science, Skepticism, Teaching | Leave a comment