Teacher Burns Crosses on the Arms of Students
 

A teacher at a middle school in Ohio burned a cross on the arms of students.


What. The. Hell.

It's fine to be passionate about your beliefs but not to preach them at a public school nor to harm a student by burning a cross on their arms. This guy should be teaching at a private religious school that would appreciate his religious fervor or NOT be teaching at all IMO.

This:

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Mount-...xbBIT0.qVH2ocA

is an X????

Cross or X
 

I don't care what it is - you don't burn ANYTHING into a student's arm!

I think more info is going to come out about the "burning." I don't think it's going to be the case where he actually did something that caused heat and pain and an injury

(Maybe it's going to be some kind of reaction that accelerates tanning or some stuff like that the kid volunteered for, so the kid is marked, but not actually "burned," as we'd typically think of it.)

We'll see, but I don't think that you'd be looking at a civil suit and a long investigation for actually burning a kid intentionally, no matter what the image was.

And as far as being insubordinate for having a Bible is his classroom: certainly the guy can't be teaching religion as part of his class, particularly if he was directed not to discuss Creationism at all.

(I'm always somewhat sympathetic to teachers when they are accused of "teaching" something that actually came up incidentally because a kid brought it up. It sounds like this guy has been doing this stuff for years though, so maybe he really was teaching it.)

But personally if I was told that I couldn't keep a Bible among my personal possessions at school (or a Koran, Book of Mormon, or any religious text) I might see if I had grounds to sue because the state was restricting my free excercise, assuming of course that there was anytime during the day like lunch when I was considered "off the clock." But I wouldn't expect to display my religious text in a way that seems like an endorsement.

ETA: I don't want anyone to think I think it's okay for public school teachers to teach and promote a specific religion, particularly when they are being paid to teach science. Looking back over my post, I wasn't sure if in my skepticism about what the guy is being accused of, I seemed like I thought what he was doing was okay.

I think this was the best quote of the whole article
"Freshwater's friend Dave Daubenmire defended him.

"With the exception of the cross-burning episode ... I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district," he told The Columbus Dispatch in a story published Friday."

My family is from this town, and it is rather christian blue collar town, but there are Muslims and Hindus, not to mention a variety of Christians who may vary in what Mr. Freshwater teaches. This is why you can not teach values from a specific standpoint. Values must be taught through life lessons or in general senses, not religious beliefs in regards to the classroom. This is not the first time he has provided controversy, he had his students read directly from the bible before, that did not go national like this though.

The problem isn't the crosses... the problem is that HE BURNED THEM INTO HIS STUDENTS ARMS

Did he actually?

I keep trying to find out more, but I just think that if you burned something in to a kids arm, you'd be in jail the next day.

he tool a student says his science teacher used to burn a cross on his arm comes with a warning: Never touch or come in contact with the high voltage output of this device.

When the boy's parents complained, administrators at Mount Vernon Middle School told John Freshwater, the school's eighth-grade science teacher, to lock up or remove the BD-10A High Frequency Generator from the classroom. About the same size and shape as a power screwdriver, its tip puts out up to 50,000 volts of electricity.

Science teachers use the generator to ionize gases in a test tube so that students can identify them by their glowing colors.

But Freshwater, the student's parents said, also used it to shock their son and other students, branding their forearms with a cross-shaped welt.

Rest of article: http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live...1_4JA5TI2.html

It's absolutely amazing that he wasn't fired immediately if he did that, especially against the kids' will.

ETA: except that: "A shock from the device would feel like the static shock from touching a metal doorknob after walking across carpet on a dry winter day, said Gerald Cuzelis, who owns the company that makes the tool" so maybe it's hard to know where the truth here exactly.