Yes, he's still employed...but not for much longer. Predictably, some are 'shocked, SHOCKED!' by that...

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MOUNT VERNON, Ohio -- The Mount Vernon eighth-grade science teacher who has been under scrutiny for focusing on creationism and intelligent design in his classes will contest his planned firing at an Aug. 26 hearing.

The date was announced last night during a school board meeting in which several supporters for John Freshwater publicly chastised the school board for its plans to fire him.

Darcy Miller, whose son was taught by Freshwater, derided school administrators for singling out Freshwater when she said other teachers freely offer their opinions in the classroom.

"They (the administration) dug up any dirt they could that would put John Freshwater in the light of being a zealot shoving Christianity down the throats of his students," Miller said.

Sam Barone was the only speaker last night to publicly praise the school board for taking measures to remove Freshwater from the classroom.

"You have done it fairly," he said. "You have done it courageously."

An investigator for the district found that Freshwater's teachings undermined science education in the public school district and that his students had to be re-taught science principles when they got into higher grades.

The family of one of Freshwater's former students who had a cross burned onto his arm by the teacher sued the school district and Freshwater last month. The suit says the boy's civil rights were violated.

Freshwater was notified last week that the board plans to suspend, then fire him which would keep him from returning to the classroom this fall, even if his appeals process has not been completed.

Freshwater remains on the payroll for now.

What's amazing is how many will defend a guy shown to be guilty of misteaching and even torturing his students. Says a lot about mainstream American rural Christianity, doesn't it?

Interesting wording for the article intro...doesn't mention the scrutiny for abusing his students by forcibly branding crosses on them. Guess that little detail isn't worth mentioning?

....I thought they slid over that one pretty lightly myself. I'm sorry, but torture is torture, and that's a very serious (I would say criminal) charge.

If he gets off in the end with a firing and paying off a lawsuit, he's gotten off lightly.

I'd be willing to bet if the teacher was branding an ankh, pentacle, star of david or a crescent moon instead of crosses it would have been mentioned over and over and he would have been run out of town long ago.

They'd have lynched the poor bastard then...:)

...it'll be the school district paying off the lawsuit. It's one of the things that creationists fail to mention when they urge teachers to "do the Lord's work" in their classrooms. Since it's unconstitutional, it always gets knocked down by the courts, and the school district ends up paying millions to defend the inevitable lawsuits.

Why hasn't any parent set this guy on fire yet?

The school district will absolutely not be paying off the lawsuit, you are 100% wrong about that.

The School district does not, on it'sown, make any money. The school district is entirely dependent on tax revenue to operate. So, it isn't the school district that will be paying the lawsuit, it is the taxpayers of the city, county, state and country that will be paying for these waste of time lawsuits.

Kinda my point.

I am curious about one issue here, and that is the branding or torture issue. I was struck while reading a few articles earlier that there didn't seem to be the kind of outrage in MSM coverage and interviews with the locals as you would expect if kids were tortured. Some covereage seemed to indicate the teacher was demonstrating a high frequency generator? of some sort. Was this actually torture? That is, was it painful, did it cause burning as one would imagine with the branding of animals? Was there permanent scarring as in branding? I did not get that impression from the earlier coverage. Was it something more inocuous, a gadget used in class causing a temorary mark on the skin which fades away after a short time? The teacher I believe claimed the mark was an X, not a cross.

I am by no means defending this teacher, and I am opposed to including creationism or ID in Science curricula. I did find the coverage of this incident to be unclear, with one or both sides overstating or understating the case.

Click on the link below and then enlarge the picture. It ain't an X.

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Thank you for the link, Arch. They sure ain't Xes, and it's clear he isn't an art teacher either!

It certinly illuminated the PC Secular Humanist thugs for the zealots they are for Darwinian Evillusion being taught as fact instead of weak supposition that it is..

Dd

Heh. Another great example of DD's insanity at work. A story about a crackpot xian who branded kids is turned into 'pc secular humanist thugs'. If only he could disown the now-ex teacher...

Firing the guy now would be good, but they've let him teach far too long to get off the hook on potential lawsuits. Especially given plenty of former complaints.