Meet John Freshwater, an eighth-grade school science teacher from Ohio who likes to play loose with the facts, use the Bible as a scientific resource, and, yes, torture children with electricity.
The New York Times reports that the school district started the procedure to fire Freshwater back on June 2008 because he burned crosses into the skin of two students with a Tesla coil and taught creationism in class. Freshwater says that the creationism accusation is “fabricated” because he failed to remove a Bible from his desk. He said the Bible in question was his “workplace bible, not his devotional bible”. Freshwater’s pastor said, “If he had ‘Origin of Species’ on his desk, they would celebrate that.” If by they, he means East Coast liberals like me, then he’d be correct.
Regarding the charge of teaching creationism (aka Intelligent Design), Freshwater used Legos to illustrate how difficult it would be to randomly put them together to build a Lego car or a Lego house . . . you know, “proving” that there was a hand behind evolution guiding it through its intricacies. When cross-examined the other day, Freshwater said that he did recall the exercise and that maybe his students initiated it reported The Columbus Dispatch. The school district lawyer also played a tape recording of Freshwater appearing on a radio show back in April discussing the Lego exercise:
If you mixed up the blocks for years, the likelihood that they would become something tangible is improbable, Freshwater told the show’s host, Dr. Patrick Johnson of Rightremedy.org. He compared the blocks to human cells and said that the chances that a random combination of cells could become an eyeball are “slim to none.”
But, even after hearing his own radio interview, Freshwater could not recall the exercise.
Freshwater also passed out handouts that said that the giraffe and the woodpecker could not have possible evolved reported The Columbus Dispatch. The students were not allowed to take the handouts out of class, because Freshwater said he was conserving paper.
In another round of questioning regarding a survey in which Freshwater allegedly asked incoming students about the importance of religion in their life, Freshwater said that he had never surveyed his students reported The Columbus Dispatch. The school district lawyer then presented Freshwater with two completed student surveys.
. . . he [Freshwater] studied them closely and, after a long pause, replied, “It appears like you have gone through my room and taken some stuff out.”
Apparently so, Mr. Freshwater, apparently so.
After Freshwater is finally fired, I hope that he enjoys teaching pseudo-science at some Christian private school at half the salary.