Branding Your Faith: Students as Christian Cattle

Posted by ScuzzBuster

September 1, 2008

According to Associated Press writer Doug Whiteman on June 20th, 2008, science teacher John Freshwater of Mount Vernon Middle School in Ohio was fired for burning the image of a cross on to a student’s arm during class.

No. Really.

Well, there is a story behind this. Apparently, he was demonstrating some type of high frequency generation device by burning students with it. I mean, what better way to demonstrate scientific principles than to disfigure people?

Freshwater claims he was burning an “X” not a cross, but see for yourself, the AP picture is here (reprinted without permission). Apparently the scar from the burn lingered for weeks in the initial report .

The school districts Director of Teaching and Learning, Lynda Weston told investigators that she “has dealt with complaints about Freshwater for much of her 11-year term at the district.”

Apparently, Freshwater had a history of insubordinate behavior by refusing to remove religious items from his classroom, preaching his personal Christian beliefs and creationism to his science classes. It had also come out that a former superintendent of the school district had tried to find another position for Freshwater due to the issues, but since he was only certified in science, they were unable.

Where do you begin with the questions on this? First, the kid’s family is suing the teacher and the school district. The district will almost certainly have to answer to this. After admitting 11 years of complaints regarding this person, how could they possibly expect the story to not end badly? The families are complaining, he’s blatantly violating the legal separation of church and state by preaching his personal religious beliefs in the classroom and he’s promoting creationism, a religious belief with absolutely no scientific data to support. Freshwater apparently was telling his students that evolution had no basis because of the inaccuracies of radio carbon dating.

I’m not even in the mood to argue the Intelligent Design vs Darwin stance here, but the fact is that this man, who for over a decade if not two (complaints were only acknowledged back 11 years though he had been teaching for 21 years), had been utilizing his position as an employee of the state to forcefully push his beliefs on a captive audience of students who were legally required to be there. Religious dogma not only drove him to habitually break the law for 11 years, but after years of getting away with it, his judgment and common sense was so clouded and twisted that this whole burning incident seemed like a good idea to him.

You’ll see a lot of arguments against dogma and how religion throughout history has and still does cause the untold death and suffering of millions in its name. How about the humiliation and suffering of one poor kid who came to school one day and went home with burns that lasted for weeks? Even if the boy was a Christian, I can’t imagine he would have approved of this. The report makes no mentions of the student’s beliefs or the beliefs of his family. But it’s not pertinent to the blatant violation of law and basic human dignity.

I have a feeling that the lawsuit by the family against Mr. Freshwater will allow him to feel like and present himself as a “religious martyr,” but I hope that there are strong repercussions against the school district. Public schools in this country still apparently are wrestling with the message that there is a legal obligation to guarantee to separation of church and state in our public institutions. Unfortunately, in this instance it took a student getting physically harmed to bring the problem to light.

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