geek.teacher

The following story sickens me for two reasons.  Obviously, any man who would brand a student is fruit loops and needs to be cast out on his duffer.  But from an educational policy perspective, the following bits in combination horrify me much more:

John Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher for the past 21 years

Makes you go “hmmm…” until you get to this:

Freshwater was also reprimanded several times for refusing to move his Bible from his classroom desk and teaching creationism alongside evolution, according to the 15-page independent report. The report also cites evidence that Mr. Freshwater told his students that “science is wrong because the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so anyone who is gay chooses to be gay and is therefore a sinner.”

Emphasis mine, of course.  I would love to know what kind of reprimands he received, and why on earth nobody moved him out of a science teaching position if he’s clearly opposed to basic science.  Assuming Ohio is a tenure state with unions, I get why it can be difficult to remove him entirely from teaching without some sort of branding incident first.  The unfortunate reality of having Unions is the protection of all teachers, regardless of whether, in the end, they deserve it or not.  But surely the principal, superintendent, or school board has enough authority to reassign him to a position where he’s not actively arguing against the very academic standards he has a responsibility to uphold.

Science in the classroom needs to come from actual science.  Creationism does not equal science.  So get that man out of the classroom without him going psycho, please.  Quite frankly, everybody involved in this whole mess has failed the children who stepped foot into Mr. Freshwater’s classroom to learn science.

Update 6/22: Thanks to @garageflowers for a link to the investigation results in PDF.  the investigators clearly found that he had taught about evolution and creationism.  I feel the pain of the high school teachers who complain about having to deal with the fallout of that, but it’s even more interesting given the following:

In the interview of one other 8thgrade science teacher, sheindicated she followed the curriculum and, as such, did not teach evolution, creationism, intelligent design, the periodic table, the big bang theory or thermodynamics. 

Apparently he didn’t just do the cross branding just once, this only happened to be the first time somebody complained about it enough for somebody to look into it.  Sigh.

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