At least the district has finally gotten around to firing him. Here's some background:
School board members voted 5-0 to fire Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater. Board attorney David Millstone said Freshwater is entitled to a hearing to challenge the dismissal.
Freshwater denies wrongdoing and will request such a hearing, the teacher's attorney, Kelly Hamilton, told the Mount Vernon News.
School board members met a day after the consulting firm H.R. On Call Inc. released its report on the teacher's case.
The report came a week after a family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus against Freshwater and the school district, saying Freshwater burned a cross on a child's arm that remained for three or four weeks.
I just love this part, though:
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 for a story published Friday.
Lot of idiots in that town, apparently.
I am wary of fundamentalism in all forms. It's not the religion I am afraid of but the sometimes mindless adherence to a code of behavior that defied logic, convention or safety. I wouldn't deny an individual the right to have themselves tattooed, branded or whatever to "celebrate" their religion, but there are people out there who think that their fervent religious beliefs entitle them to do whatever they want in the name of religion. This is the mindset that gave us jihadist, Jim Jones and the FLDS. God gave us minds for a reason. And if any religion is more a cult of personality than a method of worship, then that is suspect to me. And that goes for some very prominent Christian churches as well as some off shoots of other religions.
ReplyDeleteDonalbain must be one of the residents, to judge from the comments on your linked article.
ReplyDeleteI missed that. Sick. Just sick.