Board Votes to Fire Teacher in Ohio Case

Boy, I’m proud to be an Ohioan (shakes head). I saw on the news that there was more to this case than just the bible on the desk. Besides what was written here about the branding, I heard he taught the students that homosexuality was a sin. This guy needed to be fired on many levels. As usual, there’s more to these stories than the journalists first discover. Journalism in that regard has been suffering more and more since the coming of the Internet. Not saying it’s the Internet’s fault though.

What a nut-case! While I can understand the prayer at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting (a voluntary Christian-based school organization), I can’t understand why the school system let him continue to teach with his undermining the established standards.

In my opinion, if this Science teacher wanted to teach Creationism/Intelligent Design, then he should have applied for a position at a private – Christian-based school.

While I don’t beleive what this guy did was right by any stretch of the imagination. I do feel he had just grounds for questioning evolution. Why should a theory be taught as a fact? Why should our children be rasied to be brainwashed by what someone decides they should be taught. I feel they should be taught that there are other options out there. I also feel it is good to question science. Scientists are always stating something as a fact and then later recanting that so called fact. Science is not infallible and should not be taught as such.

As for his Christian based teaching. I do not agree with that. No one should have anothers beliefs shoved down their throats. Whether it be religion or that science is the undisputed truth. As far as branding a cross on some of his students, I wonder what in the world this guy was thinking. It is quite obvious that he is a Christian Fanatic, and it colored his teaching. I do feel he deserved to be fired. I firmly believe that Christian teaching and principle has no place in the public school system.

Is this kook a member of the Westboro Baptist church? (You know, the idiots who continue to picket the funerals of soldiers and other citizens carrying their “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers” signs.) Why didn’t this buffoon just bring along his ink kit and tattoo his personal religious symbols on these kids’ foreheads? Shouldn’t he be with the rest of his Westboro congregation readying for the Rite of Passage of George Carlin? Yes, Westboro has said that they will infiltrate his funeral with “George is in hell” signs. (So much for “judge not”, huh?)I’m sure that Mr. Carlin is laughing and flicking his cigar ashes at them from the Great Beyond, but it does leave one to wonder why they couldn’t confront George when he was alive and better equipped to tell them to p*ss off. These people, this teacher included, really make me angry, but that in itself makes me ashamed. These people are not worthy of my personal power.

Thats just sad. I suppose if he taught at a private christian school the whole ‘bible’ thing would be okay, but come on this is a public school. He is pretty much saying that everyone who attends the school has to have the same beliefs as him.
As for the burning thing…thats just wrong on every level. Its sad he ever got hired to teach.

OMG! He burned these kids? A teacher shouldn’t bring their religious convictions into the classroom, but to lay a hand on a child, any child, like that…oooh I would so be suing this guy and the school if it was my kids, not to mention I would totally kick his A&@!

The most disturbing part of this whole mess to me is that the parents whose children were burned never did anything until the last boy’s, and all they did was complain to the school. Their children were deliberately abused by a teacher and they didn’t have the teacher arrested?! They said they didn’t want the teacher fired.

When I was in middle school, I had a teacher who singled me out for abuse. I don’t know why. I was quiet and studious; she just decided she didn’t like me. In a parent-teacher conference with my mother she screamed at me, called me names, had me sobbing, and my mother did nothing. I learned, for right or wrong, that my mother would not protect me from authority.

What do you think all those children learned from this?

The fact is that if he had been a Wiccan finatic or a Satanic follower, he would be fired without any question for trying to impose his beliefs on children. Why should Christianity be any different? I live in Utah, I am a practicing witch and I wear my pentacle proudly. My son has come home from school countless times with Christian based books from his first grade teacher’s personal library. So as much as we would like to see religion kept out of the classroom, somehow it seems to be there anyway. I don’t get upset about this, I love it that my children are allowed to explore all religions and I answer any questions that they have to the best of my ability and when I dont know the answer we find it together. If only Christian parents were so forgiving and open!!
As for the teacher, yes he definitely should be fired, the school should also be held accountable, if indeed they have had complaints for a long period of time about the teacher.

There have been much discussion in Mt Vernon about this topic. The people are practicallly at war with each other.
One of the biggest supporters was on Geraldo last Saturday, and Geraldo ripped him good.

http://www.knoxpages.com/Forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9983

Not that I think Terri V is still reading these comments, but I’ll still say it:

We generally don’t question evolution in science classrooms for the same reason we don’t question gravity or photosynthesis or why the sky is blue or why the grass is green. By nearly all scientific standards, evolution is no longer considered a theory, it’s considered fact. Advancements in DNA and genetics have long since confirmed that what many of us have known for centuries looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck is indeed a duck.

As soon as the Christian community is willing to get in the habit of calling Jesus a “theory,” then I’ll happily qualify that the existence of this duck is also just a “theory.”

When is Separation of Church and State NOT Separation of Church and State? The split-second the FCA steps half-an-inch onto public school property. And at lunch, yet? My stars, what are those people thinking up there?

Fanaticism is the fastest growing religion in the world right now. It just horrifies me to imagine where this guy might turn up next…
preaching – not teaching – I can only hope.

This guy is obviously no Christian, but simply a mentally ill menace using his religion literally as a weapon. He should have been removed from the school, if not society itself, years ago. I wonder how much of this is because of the Christian implications and how much is the district’s tenure policies. Still, it’s an abomination no matter how you look at it, and the district officials should be forced to pay this lawsuit from their own pockets so as not to punish the students even more.

If you read the investigation the students volunteered to do this X on their arm. It was not a good idea, but the teacher had been doing this for 21 years and now everyone complains because he is a Christian. The whole thing came to light when he was asked to move his Bible off of his desk. My kids get evolution shoved down their throat in schools and are degraded for their beliefs in God. So get over it! This country is so full of free speech that we allow flag-burning, hard-core rap with profanity and heavy-metal lyrics that worship satan, tobacco advertising, hate speech, pornography, nude dancing, solicitation and various forms of symbolic speech. The real problem here is that this man oves God and loves the students. He realizes that the school system is allowing freedom of speech to everyone else except Christians. Homosexuals are sinning, it’s very sad that their are so many lost people out there.

Pffffft! Please don’t even get me started on your ignorance. Your post was so full of it that I will simply pick out my favorite guffaws:

Quoted:”This country is so full of free speech that we allow flag-burning, hard-core rap with profanity and heavy-metal lyrics that worship satan, tobacco advertising, hate speech, pornography, nude dancing, solicitation and various forms of symbolic speech…..Homosexuals are sinning, it’s very sad that their are so many lost people out there. ”

You’re damned right we do. That’s what makes us America. If you don’t like it, get the **** out. The last statement is the most ignorant of all. What the **** makes you think that your chosen religion should dictate how everyone else lives their lives. You thump your little book and declare that that is the only way to live. So what, I read The Wizard of Oz and I say YOU SHOULD LIVE YOUR LIFE by that book. It makes just as much sense. Like it or not, there are thousands of other religions out here, not only yours. There are Jews, Buddists practicing Witches…yes, WITCHES (like me). So, to sum up with your own words “GET OVER IT.”

Quoted: “If you read the investigation the students volunteered to do this X on their arm.”

Children cannot “volunteer” for tatoos until they are eighteen (with or without the presence of a bible). If your daughter “volunteers” to have sex with a teacher, I’ll surmise that you okayed it.

I skimmed through the report – They do focus a lot on his religion and the religious preferences, but for a good reason.
The marks on the kids’ arms (there are a couple pictures) are of CROSSES, not “x”s. And they’re big. The one they picture is from elbow crease to wrist on the inside of a kid’s forearm.
Not only that, but in his class (he does teach SCIENCE), he was telling the kids that “science is often wrong”, and citing the homosexuality gene – saying it was not a gene, but a sin, and anyone who’s gay is sinning and evil. He also refutes the teaching of creation, the Big Bang, etc., with Christianity. He apparently had lots of Christian and anti-science posters on the wall, many creation books, books and videos refuting the things he taught in schoolbooks – and often told his students the books were just wrong, not only a Bible on his desk, but several all over the class and the lab….. He was asked several times to remove these items and stick to the planned curriculum, and he adamantly refused, but then told the interviewers that he was the model of perfect behavior and thought he had never been insubordinate!!
Personally, I think he should be fired both for burning students AND for his overzealous religious beliefs. It would be one thing to be a teacher with strong religious overtones (having a Bible on his desk as well as a few personal religious items, or behaving “Christian-like” would be fine), but to be a teacher who’s actively preaching to students and telling them anything but his views are wrong, goes against church and state, and helps to create the narrow-minded, bigoted people most of us Pagans and “minorities” fight against.

You I am so tired of Xtions saying how terrible homosexuality is According to experts, over 1500 different species of animals have homosexual behavior so according to them “God” is the creator so “he” created animals in this way. SO HOW can it be “WRONG”?

But back to the topic This guy is whaco what is he thinking burning children and why the HE** was this allowed for years? What is wrong with these people? as for the bibal on the desk what about a pagan bible or spell book on a students would that be okay? Probably not!!!

i agree if that teacher had a copy of the satanic bible, a Koran ,anything by silverravenhawk, and the posters or what ever to go along with would he have made it this far in his “teaching career” i think not. heck if hed been putting pentacles/pentagrams on kids, how far would that have flown? guarantee not as far as the” xs” did