On Friday, the Mount Vernon school board reviewed a 15-page investigative report on Freshwater’s actions in the classroom, and voted to dismiss the science teacher of 21 years.

Freshwater had been accused, among other things, of using a Tesla coil to burn a cross in a student’s arm, proselytizing students, teaching creationism contrary to school policy, and refusing to remove a Bible from his desk.

He and school officials still face legal action. The family of the student whose arm was burned filed a civil complaint in US District Court in Columbus last week, naming Freshwater and school officials as defendants. The law suit alleges Freshwater’s religious activities in the classroom violated the civil rights of the student, known only as John Doe.

The complaint also alleges school officials failed to reprimand Freshwater sufficiently after the arm-burning incident, and permitted him to proselytize students in class in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Freshwater, a fundamentalist Christian by all appearances, became a poster child for the so-called “war on Christianity” earlier this year when he refused to remove his copy of the Bible from his desk. Christian students in the school held rallies for his support, and a local right-wing Christianist radio commentator championed Freshwater as yet another victim of the secular war on religion. (See this story at WorldNetDaily, which quotes said commentator.)

Soon after, allegations of other Freshwater’s religious activities in the classroom came out, including most famously the arm-burning incident. School officials finally had to act like they were doing something and hired an independent investigator to check into the allegations. Meanwhile, they allowed Freshwater to continue to teach, but with an observer in the room.

Freshwater was very popular among the students; we can guess mostly among the Christians. Whether that popularity spilled out into students of other religious persuasions is doubtful. The hoo-roar about the Bible and Freshwater’s beliefs polarized the rural school’s student body, with so-called Christian students turning the whole issue into an Us-versus-Them deal.

Students who did not bring a Bible to school were assumed to be against the Bible, Freshwater, and probably God and country, too. One student who brought a Torah to school was taunted by students who didn’t quite understand that the Torah forms part of the Christian Old Testament.

[An aside: I see a TV movie coming out of this whole thing. Better it be a documentary or a 60 Minutes segment, but some alert Hollywood writer has got to see the real-life drama here. You wait. The networks might be able to whip something up by spring.]

The District Court case will be interesting to watch. There is no jury, just a judge. As the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling proved, even conservative judges have a better understanding of the First Amendment than most Christianists do. Freshwater was so blatant in his proselytizing that he was clearly infringing the Establishment Clause, which essentially says that the government cannot establish a State Church.

The writers of the Constitution remembered what problems many colonists had with the State Churches in their home countries, after all, and made it a point to protect freedom of religion in the new United States.

Legal opinions since then have held that public schools, and public school teachers, are agents of the government and therefore cannot actively promote one religion over any other. Freshwater is bound to be afoul of that legal precedent, judging from all the evidence available publicly.

The “war on Christianity” nutjobs, of course, have turned the Bible-on-the-desk thing into a religious crusade of sorts, conveniently ignoring the arm-burning problem and the constitutional issues or characterizing them as “attacks” on the good Christian soldier John Freshwater.

Secular forces (you can read that to mean satanic forces, if you like; most Christianists don’t distinguish between the adjectives much) are trying to quash Christians’ freedom to be Christian. Freshwater, they say, is just another victim of this conspiracy.

Morons.

There is no legal requirement that Freshwater or any other teacher for that matter set aside his or religion in order to teach in a public school. There cannot be; his freedom to worship is a First Amendment right.

So, Freshwater can go off and pray somewhere, read his Bible, perhaps even discuss informally with students what he did in church last Sunday. If a teacher has to, he or she can take religious holidays off, wear a yarmulke or head scarf, or even funny underwear, as long the teacher does not tell his or her students that they have to do the same thing.

If Freshwater had his Bible out in the open and left it at that, his superiors probably would not have batted an eyelash. It was Freshwater’s blatant preaching and teaching in class that raised a red flag. He was effectively telling his seventh graders that they had to believe as he believes, or face the awful consequences.

Whether those consequences meant lower grades or an uncomfortable afterlife remains to be learned.

In a quasi-rural community like Mount Vernon, Freshwater’s activities might have been okay if everyone in the town was of the same brand of Christian as he. Times and demographics have changed, though. Mount Vernon is now a bedroom community for Dayton, as well as a farm town, so the formerly homogenous religious population, if it ever really existed, is gone.

The local schools now have Jews, atheists, wiccans, who knows what, and the kind of behavior that Freshwater was exhibiting stands out like a angry grizzly in a campground. Maybe Freshwater took that as a challenge, to win over the heathens, but his superiors should have shut him down right away.

Instead they dithered, probably to avoid offending all the old-timer Christians in the community, leading to the current chain of events. Now they’re in hot water in federal court and in news articles on CNN. Out of the frying pan into the fire.

So many other school districts have fallen into this same trap that it makes one wonder whether their officials ever pay attention to the news. I guess it’s easier to stick their heads in the sand and hope the difficult problems just go away.

Too bad it doesn’t work.

School officials say the matter is still under consideration.

The teacher in question is John Freshwater, a popular but controversial teacher, who has refused his superiors’ demands that he remove his Bible from students’ view. Freshwater is also under investigation for allegedly burning a cross on a student’s arm, for disseminating religious literature during class, and for proselytizing students.

The Minutemen are undoubtedly affiliated with another Christian nutcase up there, “Coach” Dave Daubenmire, who quickly came to Freshwater’s support after the Bible incident. Daubenmire supports a rightwing Christian group, the Minutemen Unlimited.

In a letter to school officials, the Mount Vernon Minutemen say they will replace the school board if the school system does not announce its supports the Bible.

“Although we do not want this to be taken as a threat, we feel it is only right that we inform you that if a public statement is not made in support of the Bible by June 10 we will have no other choice than to begin a recall procedure on all members of the School Board who voted to ban the Bible from the view of the children.”

Note the twisting of facts here. Mount Vernon school officials did not at any point say they were opposed to the Bible, or that students could not read the Bible. All they want is for Freshwater to keep the Bible out of view, to avoid infringing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Typical of right-wing Christian groups, the Minutemen are evading the entire legal issue of pushing Christianity on public school kids and instead making it a case of Us (Bible-lovin’ Amurricans) vs. Them (pencil-necked librul atheists).

The school board, incidentally, did not “vote” to ban the Bible, either. It was the administrators who told Freshwater to move his Bible. School board members do not typically get involved in the daily administration of personnel. So, the Mintemen don’t even have their facts straight.

Big surprise.

Freshwater made headlines several weeks ago when he refused to remove his Bible from his classroom desk. Soon, there were allegations that he was preaching religion in class, distributing creationist literature to his science students, and that he allegedly burned a cross on a student’s arm with an electrical device.

The school district has hired an independent investigator to substantiate or refute the allegations. Freshwater was allowed to continue teaching meanwhile, with an administrative observer in the classroom to monitor him.

The device he allegedly used to burn the student is in fact a hand-held Tesla coil, a staple of science education. My students have seen it in action. It can generate high voltage arcs a few centimeters long when held near a ground. While the sparks are not lethal, they can cause pinpoint skin burns that can be pretty painful. I speak from experience.

It boggles the mind why any teacher would subject a student to a potentially painful electrical arc. I tell mine to stay away from the business end of the device, even if they think they’re “tough.”

Besides, the smell of burnt flesh is not all that appealing.

Well, nevermind, I know the answer to the question already, but here’s yet more evidence that fundies “just don’t get it.”

The scene is Mount Vernon (Ohio) Middle School, where seventh-grade science teacher and Christianist John Freshwater stands accused of, among other things, proselytizing his students, burning a cross in a student’s skin, and teaching creationism against district policies. His district is investigating the charges.

It seems that some students (and parents, I’ll betcha) assume that if you’re not for Freshwater, you’re not a Christian. Or worse yet, if you’re not Christian, you can’t support him. Witness these quotes from the local newspaper:

Several comments from students and parents indicate that acceptance and religious tolerance is a one-way street for many concerned.

Beth Murdoch, whose daughter attends the middle school, is one of the parents who has expressed concerns about the sometimes hostile environment at the middle school.

“You’re either for Mr. Freshwater or you’re against Mr. Freshwater. There’s no in between,” Murdoch said. “In the kids’ minds, I think, it is just the Bible issue. And who is going to go against the Bible? Nobody. But it seems like the ‘Christians’ are using that as an excuse to gang up on the ‘atheists.’

“My daughter Arie told me about a Jewish child who brought his Torah to school when other students brought Bibles in support of Freshwater,” she continued. “He thought he was supporting freedom of religious expression, and the other kids just ripped him apart. ‘What are you doing?’ they asked. ‘You can’t support Mr. Freshwater, you’re Jewish.’ So they don’t get it.

“I don’t think people realize the depth of what’s going on between the students. It’s a mob mentality right now. It’s peer pressure. To not wear a T-shirt and to not bring your Bible when they say bring your Bible and wear a T-shirt, you’re asking for trouble.”

…
Murdoch said that Arie sometimes wears a cross necklace to school. Another student, according to Murdoch, asked Arie why she wore the cross if she doesn’t support Freshwater.

Freshwater, who appears to be friends with a right-wing religious nutcase “Coach” Dave Daubenmire, first made headlines when he refused administrators’ orders to remove his desk copy of the Bible from students’ view. Freshwater and “Coach” Dave made the situation into a freedom of religion/freedom of expression issue, an example of the secular “war on Christianity.”

Students rallied behind Freshwater, a popular teacher in the school, by holding a rally, clutching their Bibles in rebellion. Then other details about life in Freshwater’s classroom came out.

He allegedly makes it a habit to loan out classroom copies of the Bible to students, teaches and hands out creationist literature while conducting science lessons, and preaches a very narrow kind of Christianity in class. One student has accused him of burning a cross in the boy’s skin with an electrical demonstration device, either a Tesla coil or a Van de Graaf generator.

As happens in such situations, those supporting Freshwater have turned him into a kind of martyr, while those who are lukewarm about him have been made into puppets of the Enemy. The kids there apparently don’t get the connection that the Torah is a holy book and actually provides the first few books of the Christian Bible. To wear a cross and not support Freshwater is somehow a sin against one’s faith.

It’s akin to gang warfare. Instead of the Crips and the Bloods, you’ve got the “atheists” and the “Christians.” Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Freshwater may be a great teacher, and popular among his students, but somewhere along the way his superiors dropped the ball. Public school teachers, even in a small midwest town, cannot by law preach religion in class. Constitutional law prevents it. If the school district had been on the ball, they would have quashed Freshwater’s activities before things got out of hand.

Instead, they stood by while his peculiar kind of exclusive Christianity created an atmosphere of mistrust and acrimony in what is probably a really nice little town.

Freshwater first hit the news several days ago when school officials told him to remove his Bible from clear view of his students. The teacher refused, prompting both a student rally supporting him and an advisory notice from the American Civil Liberties Union supporting school administrators. The religious Right seized the controversy as another attack on religion.

Then other details about Freshwater’s classroom behavior came to light. He keeps a stack of Bibles in his room to loan out to students. He passes out pro-creationist literature to counter scientific explanations of the Big Bang and evolution. He allegedly burned a cross on at least one student’s arm as part of a demonstration of electricity. He taught his classes the meaning of Good Friday and Easter.

Freshwater has had a religious agenda for some time. Quoting a former colleague, Retired middle school science teacher Jeff George, the Mount Vernon News reported yesterday:

George said there may be substance to other allegations that Freshwater used the classroom to advance his own personal beliefs. “The school administration has known for a long time that Freshwater was crossing the line, and he should have been fired a long time ago.”

George recalls several occasions when Freshwater “didn’t always stay on track with science. What he was teaching was not true, and there have been numerous complaints over the years.” (On more than one occasion, evaluations in Freshwater’s file indicate that Freshwater was directed to work more closely with George in following the course of study.)

George also remembers a time when a school principal specifically told Freshwater to stop distributing religious materials in class. Freshwater then, George said, numbered the religious items, and collected them at the end of the class period to make sure none would leave the classroom.

“He (Freshwater) was promoting a particular belief system,” George said, “and preached against other religions, not just Muslims or Jews or Hindus, but also any Christian denomination that was different from his.”

Freshwater is friends with a religious Right kook, Coach Dave Daubenmire, a former high school football coach in London, Ohio, with his own history of run-ins with his employers. After told he could no longer hold prayer sessions with his teams before games, “Coach Dave” quit, forming Pass the Salt Ministry and Minuteman United. Both espouse Christian dominionism, the belief that Christianity (their kind) should be the law and religion of the land. Reading Minuteman United’s brochure will give you a scary sense of its mission.

Daubenmire has his own radio program. Immediately after Freshwater’s Bible-on-the-desk issue, Daubenmire came to his defense, calling it a violation of Freshwater’s First Amendment (free speech) rights and an example of the “war against Christianity” by secular forces like the evil ACLU. Now that other allegations have come to light, Daubenmire is now spinning the news by accusing school officials of creating a “smoke screen” around their efforts to “ban the Bible.”

It’s not clear at this point whether Freshwater is a member of either of Daubenmire’s organizations, but it’s apparent he’s a fellow traveler. If he has in fact been pushing his special brand of Christianity on his students, Freshwater has been violating the Establishment clause of the First Amendment for a long time, with the implicit approval of his superiors.

As US citizens, teachers have constitutionally protected rights of free speech and worship. So Freshwater can say anything he likes and worship however he likes, outside the classroom. As a public schoolteacher, he (and his employers) have to also observe the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which states that the government cannot establish, foster or espouse any one particular religion. Numerous court cases have created this understanding of the law, so it is hardly rocket science. Public school teachers can be religious; they can even have Bibles on their possession or in a desk drawer. They cannot legally teach any one kind of religion to their students, display religious artifacts (Freshwater at one point had the Ten Commandments on his classroom wall) or suggest that students must adopt any religion at all.

In a conservative Christian climate, such as exists in central Ohio, Freshwater’s milder religious indoctrination probably slipped by. His proselytizing apparently has now reached the point where even his hometown has become alarmed.

So, if he wants to teach kook Christianity to students, Freshwater needs to quit his job and go to work for a Christian school somewhere. He wants to use his current position as a bully pulpit, he either needs to shut up, do his job and be a science teacher, or be prepared to face the music.

John Freshwater, an 8th grade science teacher in Mount Vernon, has allegedly used an electrostatic device to leave Christian crosses on students’ skin, passed out anti-evolution brochures, and taught his science classes about the meaning of Good Friday and Easter. When administrators told him he had to remove a Bible from his desktop, Freshwater refused, inspiring a student rally on his behalf and an opposing response from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mount Vernon school officials have arranged for an independent investigation into the allegations against Freshwater, according to the local newspaper. He will continue to teach, but with an administrator present to monitor his behavior.

If the issue were just the presence of a single Bible on his desk, Freshwater would not be in such hot water. As it is, he has several Bibles in his classroom, which he loans out to students. Further, it is clear he uses his role as teacher to impose his religious beliefs on his students. Even if the majority of students share those beliefs, as a public school teacher (not to mention a science teacher) he is not free to introduce religion into the classroom. There’s this little thing called the US Constitution barring that kind of behavior.

Then there’s his using a demonstration device to burn a student deliberately, which is not only unprofessional, but should be grounds for dismissal in and of itself.

Stay tuned for further developments. The religious Right will make hay over this case, using it as yet another example of “the war on Christianity.” They will conveniently ignore the unprofessionalism of this teacher and instead focus on the “anti-religion” aspect. Mark my words.