Report: Ohio Teacher Burned Cross on Students' Arms

Report: Ohio Teacher Burned Cross on Students' Arms

www.foxnews.com

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio — A public school teacher taught creationism in his science class and used a device to burn the image of a cross on students' arms, according to a report by independent investigators.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is just outrageous... Im all for theaching creationism and everything but common, burning kids for the sake of the faith is way over the top. This teacher should be fired and the sad thing is that it keeps feeding the stereotype that those who practice any kind of faith are just fanatics.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)


Additional info plus pic



[edit on 20-6-2008 by Bunch]

Or it's an atheist pretending to be christian trying to put them in a bad day light. Because this is too ridiculous to be true.

[edit on 20-6-2008 by broli]

reply to post by broli


Well if you read the story is pretty obvious that the teacher in question has quite a christian background and that it not the first time he goes out of his way to force his teachings and faith upon others.

reply to post by broli


Nope, the teacher has a history of teaching creationism. Not an atheist.

The sad thing about this is that it does not surprise me at all.

Obviously religion does weird stuff to you. I have seen it to many times in my life. The majority of them are definitley fanatics.

Originally posted by broli
Or it's an atheist pretending to be christian trying to put them in a bad day light. Because this is too ridiculous to be true.

So you conclude that it must really have been an atheist posing as a christian creationist teacher who burnt a student just to make other creationist christian teachers look bad?

no that scenario is not ridiculous at all..

[edit on 20-6-2008 by riley]

reply to post by broli


Yeah, you see, all us Atheists have to do to make you fundies look foolish is to watch, wait and let the hilarity ensue(after the outraged indignation of course).

This teacher should be fired, charged and thrown in the slammer.

Originally posted by theendisnear69
Obviously religion does weird stuff to you. I have seen it to many times in my life. The majority of them are definitley fanatics.

I been going to church on an off fro the better part of my 30 years of life and as off yet I have not done anything "weird" or my religion had done anything "weird" to me. As far as fanaticism I wont denied that there are some level of that in all religions but i think is mostly minimal rather than majoritarian as you which to think.

Either way the actions of the teacher are inexcusable and should be fired immediately.

If you actually look at the article, the "burning" came from demonstrating a scientific device of some sort. They say it was electro-static.

Although, that should never have happened, I think this is a far cry from a pain filled branding of sorts. More a "Hey watch what this does"

Still, the fact that the science teacher doubts rado carbon dating isn't as big of an issue as the fact that he uses it as proof for creationism.

I'm all about people questioning conventional theories, but you can't replace them with fairy tales and expect to be taken seriously.

I got an Idea, lets burn a cross on the teacher forehead that will be nice and the teacher such a crazy fanatic will love it.

Seriously this sounds like a hoax.

www.dispatch.com...

The debate about Freshwater's actions became public in April after he refused to remove a Bible from his desk, as the district had ordered.

The report says he was insubordinate for failing to remove the Bible and other religious materials from his classroom but also found other issues about his teaching and behavior.

This article's wording disturbs me. It's one thing to tell a man he cannot push his religion onto school children, but quite another to forbid him from having his holy book inside his desk at work. Assuming he wasn't teaching or sharing the Bible with the students, I consider it a total violation of his first amendment rights for them to order its removal. If this school is a public school, then it is overseen by the federal government. Therefore, in effect, the district passed a law restricting his right to freely exercise his religion by being able to read his Bible while children were not present in the classroom.

The news always goes for the most sensationalistic angle to any story. This leads me to believe we're reading his worst of the worst "offenses" in the article. Clearly he didn't stand in front of the class shouting "Jesus is risen! Repent ye sinners!" or anything of that manner because the media would be all over that. Mind you, the best teacher I ever had in High School brutally exposed many of science's flaws where evolution and such were concerned. This was a public high school and he taught accelerated science courses. I took 3 years worth of his classes and was his teacher's assistant my senior year. The man held 7 master's or pHd's in various fields of biology & science and was taking summer classes to turn one of the master's degrees into a doctorate at the tender age of 61. By the standards being applied to this teacher prior to the burning incident, my teacher was a bad teacher... yet curiously most of his advanced placement students went on to college and performed quite well there, myself included. When he passed away there were dozens of comments of thanks and admiration to his family in our little town's newspaper.

My point here is the burning of the students should be the focus here. Instead the media has basically used the burning to springboard the story into one which tries to express outrage that he dared espouse Christian beliefs and values and that he used those beliefs to *gasp* actually make students question modern science instead of just taking everything they were taught and told about evolution and such as the gospell. Imagine what a crappy world we'd be in today if no student had ever been taught more than one theory or explanation for anything in the world. Imagine a world where a kid dares ask "what are the other theories and beliefs as to the source of life?' and is told "There are no other valid beliefs and your question shows we must brainwash you twice as hard to ensure you become more sheeplike... just the way we in academia want you." Oh, wait... we don't have to imagine a world like that because we're rapidly approaching it.

Christians, smokers, fat people, and rural whites have become the only 4 groups who remain "free game" to any and all manner of harrassment, demonization, discrimination, and hatred in this country. As long as you blame the problems of the world on one of these groups, you're politically correct and the system will embrace you and sing your praises from the rooftops as an "enlightened" individual.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


I dont understand your statement in the sense that if your boss tells you not to do something and you blatantly disobey your boss, then what happens next?

Every job has their rules and regulations and they should be follow if not why have rules then? If I go in my job doing the same thing this guy was doing, I get investigated and may be court martial in a heartbeat.

I dont understand Christians that think that every time and every place is the right place to talk about faith. Like I said earlier I am a christian but I dont feel is appropiate to be forcing my beliefs on others, simple as that, there is a time and a place and a way for religion, this is just not one.


[edit on 20-6-2008 by Bunch]

Originally posted by Bunch

 

I dont understand your statement in the sense that if your boss tells you not to do something and you blatantly disobey your boss, then what happens next?

[edit on 20-6-2008 by Bunch]

His "boss" is the government. Besides which, I believe that if I were to be told by my boss "You can't have your Bible in your desk" and then he attempted to enforce that, it would almost certainly be a test of the law because I'd file a discrimination suit in a heartbeat. The fact that teachers are essentially government employees makes it all the more troubling that the man was told that he wasn't even allowed to possess his Bible at the school. That's about as clear a violation of his right to religious freedom as it gets in the workplace because it involves a government body issuing the restriction.

My problem with this mostly centers around that issue as well as the media simply using the burned students as a platform to turn this into more of a scathing "consider this religious bastard!" story. If he was actually prostyletizing to the children, then that's another matter entirely. But the fact that the article barely touches on him actually pushing his religion and, rather, goes into details more about how he didn't conform to the "schools must shove atheism down every child's throat" model we began building when Congress declared prayer in schools to be illegal, seems to indicate to me that all he did was not push the evolutionary theory and all accompanying nonsecular theories as being the whole truth. Which is appropriate in my opinion because they are, after all, just theories, ideas of the way things might have happened in this planet's development.