Monday, July 21, 2008

Mt. Vernon OH and a teacher named Freshwater

For the past couple of months I have been trying to post a blog entry about Mr. Freshwater and the teaching of Biology in Mount Vernon HS, but every time I started writing about I got so damn mad!

For those of you not familiar with the story, apparently Mount Vernon, OH, has been letting John Freshwater teach Creationism for the past 11 years, at least. They have been unresponsive to complaints, including the annoying little fact that his students had to be re-taught scientific principles in later classes. That by itself is annoying, to me at least.

There were some articles a few months back when the school board told him to take the Bible out of his classroom, something he apparently refused to do. School Boards have the right to discipline teachers, but they also need the intestinal fortitude, which this school board lacked. That was annoying as well.

But then the school district got sued by the parents of a student who had a cross BURNED into his arm in the shape of a cross by this so called science teacher. Now I started getting very hot under the collar. It required a student to be physically abused before the school board found some . . . intestinal fortitude.

They finally fired the jerk and of course he is appealing claiming that they had no right to fire him. That takes the cake!

You know in the Dover trial I felt sorry for the school district as a whole for a number of reasons, but I really wished they hadn't have had to pay out 1 million dollars after already voting out the idiots who decided to take their roller coaster to ruin.

But in Mount Vernon I am not feeling so charitable. The School Board is as culpable as the teacher because over at least 11 years, they failed to take any positive action. I hope they wind up using their entire budget for this matter, in spite of the fact the kids are the one who will wind up paying the price.

There is no possible excuse for their behavior! At least the teacher can claim insanity!

Here is a link to the results of the investigation. In my opinion Mr. Freshwater should be in jail! Yes, the burns weren't serious, but the fact he inflicted them should be grounds. His inability to teach the required curriculum should have had him fired years ago. I do feel sorry for his students, and for the other teachers who had to work harder to make up for his ineptitude. In my opinion he is the type of person who should not be a teacher if he cannot teach without bring his personal religous views into the classroom. What makes it worse for me is that he apparently LIED to investigators, which tells me he knew exactly what he was doing.

Another wonderful example of lying for Jesus!

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