Creationism Not To Be Taught in Ohio Schools

World Religion News is reporting that the kerfuffle going on regarding the use of the Adnan Oktar (nee Harun Yahya) video on creationism has prompted the CEO of Youngstown, Ohio schools to issue a statement that creationism will not be taught.  Elisa Meyer writes:

The Ohio school curriculum has required that teachers show a creationist video as part of the tenth grade education program. The video, “Cambrian Fossils and The Creation of Species“, depicts the creationist theory of the origin of life.

However, things are going to change across Youngstown schools with the new decision made by Mohip. The CEO said they will follow a curriculum that will be completely in line with the guidelines as laid down by the Education Department of Ohio. Ohio has directed schools and institutions to base their education completely on a scientific approach and to avoid religious and pseudo-scientific beliefs and theories altogether.

World Religion News paints it as an ‘iconic’ victory for atheists, which is fundamentally myopic but indicative of how this disagreement is being framed these days.

All in the Service of a Message

A Youngstown, Ohio school district has come under fire for its inclusion of a video for tenth grade science that is produced by Adnan Oktar, also known as Harun Yahya, who was once interviewed favorably in the Intelligent Design blog Uncommon Descent (and not so favorably by The Guardian).  Yahya has a long history of being an Islamic creationist, holocaust denier and was jailed for a time in Turkey for unseemly behavior involving his organization and young girls.  

The story, by Zack Kopplin, in the Daily Beast, has this:

Youngstown, Ohio, students are learning creationism in school with materials from a Islamic, Holocaust-denying group accused of being a sex cult.

A curriculum map (PDF) recommends teachers in this public school district show a creationist video, Cambrian Fossils and the Creation of Species, as part of 10th-grade science education. The video claims that the Cambrian Explosion “totally invalidates the theory of evolution.” The Cambrian Explosion was a time period, nearly 550 million years ago, where, over the next tens of millions of years, the number of species on Earth experienced a (relatively) rapid expansion by evolutionary standards. Christian creationists regularly point to this explosion of life as evidence for creation by God and against evolution.

Blink and you’d miss the Islamic connection in the video. A black screen flashes for less than one second that says “this film is based on the works of Harun Yahya.” In the right corner, there’s a gold bubble that says, “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah” in Arabic.

As alluded to above, it seems that U.S. ID supporters and creationists are perfectly happy to hitch their wagons to people like Yahya, as long as the message is anti-evolutionary. This is disturbing, since it obscures the other poisonous aspects of Yahya's message. Kopplin continues:

Youngstown City School District is trying to “teach the controversy,” which is an old creationist argument for sneaking religion into schools, Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Rob Boston told The Daily Beast.

“The district is doing its students a disservice by pretending that a controversy exists when none does,” Boston said. “That the district is apparently inadvertently using material produced by an evolution-denying, anti-Semitic Islamic TV preacher who has been accused of running a sex cult only makes the situation worse.”

All in the service of a message.

Freshwater Out of Appeals

The Columbus Dispatch reports that former Mt. Vernon school teacher John Freshwater was, correctly, dismissed from his job:

A silent ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday puts the weight of the nation’s highest court behind what Ohio’s high court already found: that former Mount Vernon Middle School teacher John Freshwater was rightly fired in 2008 for refusing a direct order to remove religious materials from his science classroom.

This puts a merciful end to Freshwater’s slog through an administrative appeal that dragged out over two years and cost the district’s taxpayers nearly $1 million, followed by an unsuccessful appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court and on to the nation’s high court.

Finally.

Ohio: Creationism Shut Out, But Not ID?

The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that House Bill 597, which would repeal the Common Core in Ohio, has been stripped of language that would allow for the teaching of creationism in Ohio public schools.  Jim Siegel writes:

The original bill set specifications for science standards that said they must not prohibit “political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another.” A number of experts viewed that as a way to bring intelligent design or creationism into science lessons.

But under changes adopted yesterday, House Bill 597 now says that students would “review, in an objective manner, the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories in the standards.”

I am not sure that this is a whole lot better since it still includes the “strengths and weakness” language which, as interpreted by the Intelligent Design crowd, has never been successfully applied to evolutionary theory. This kind of language simply allows people that may not know the intricacies of the theory to teach it in a bad way, even if they are trying to do it objectively.

John Freshwater Loses Final Appeal

The Raw Story is reporting that the Ohio Supreme Court let stand an appeals court decision to allow the termination of Mt. Vernon science teacher John Freshwater.  From the story:

“We recognize that this case is driven by a far more powerful debate over the teaching of creationism and intelligent design alongside evolution,” the court noted in its decision. “(But) here, we need not decide whether Freshwater acted with a permissible or impermissible intent because we hold that he was insubordinate, and his termination can be justified on that basis alone.”

This seems sort of anticlimactic, but boils down the termination to concrete, non-religious terms and, thus is as narrow a reading as the court can put forth.  Thus, the case that began five years ago, ends with a poof and not a bang. 

Ohio Supreme Court to issue verdict soon in Freshwater case

Here is a story that continues to have legs.  The Kenyon Collegian is reporting that the John Freshwater case, the teacher that was accused of teaching creationism in the classroom and branding the arms of at least one student is going to finally be decided by the Ohio Supreme Court.  Eric Geller writes:

Freshwater’s dismissal brought widespread attention to a local controversy over religious education in public schools that began almost a decade ago. In interviews with the Collegian, Kenyon professors recalled following the story over the years as it evolved from a rejected intelligent design curriculum into allegations of physical violence against students.

Between 2002 and 2003, Freshwater petitioned the Board of Education to adopt a lesson plan based on materials from the Intelligent Design Network, an organization dedicated to promoting creationism. Freshwater’s proposal “was turned down by the District’s science curriculum committee, and then was turned down by the Board,” said Richard Hoppe, an affiliated scholar in biology at Kenyon, who has written extensively about Freshwater’s case for The Panda’s Thumb, a science education blog.

After the last set of allegations about Freshwater’s conduct surfaced in 2008, Hoppe attended 38 of the 40 public school board meetings leading up to the 2011 termination decision. He also taught an interdisciplinary studies course at Kenyon about the conflict between creationism and evolution.

“The materials he used in support of that proposal were classical intelligent design creationism materials,” Hoppe said. “It didn’t surprise me when some of the allegations later were that he taught using those kinds of materials.”

Professor of Biology Wade Powell said Freshwater “was teaching creation science — and the fashionable version of it at that time was called ‘intelligent design’ –– and it coincided with some battles that were being fought at the level of the state board of education about the standards for Ohio education.”

The most disturbing quote from the story is this, though:

Hoppe related an incident from the administrative hearings where a student witness, when asked what he had learned about science from Freshwater’s class, reportedly replied, “I learned that you can’t trust scientists. Scientists don’t know anything. You can’t trust science.”

“That was the most striking and disheartening thing,” Hoppe said. “You can’t trust science.”

Sometimes, when I read what comes out of state legislatures with people like Paul Broun in Georgia, I think that they get these ideas from teachers like Freshwater. Rotten science education breeds rotten science legislation.

The John Freshwater Case Continues...

ABC News is carrying a story on the case of John Freshwater, the science teacher who was let go after complaints by students and parents that he was teaching creationism and branding arms with crosses.  His case has gone to the Ohio Supreme Court.  Julie Carr Smyth and Andrew Welsh-Huggins of the AP write:

In his dismissal case, Freshwater is getting legal backing from the Charlottesville, Va.-based Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties group. Science education and humanist and secular groups have joined the side of the school board.

The school board argues that as far back as 1994, a middle school principal told Freshwater to stop distributing an "Answers in Genesis" pamphlet, which contained information about a creationist organization's seminar, according to a filing by board attorneys asking the court to uphold Freshwater's firing.

Freshwater also used a handout titled "Survival of the Fakest" to teach his students to doubt science, the board's attorneys said.

Two lower courts previously upheld Freshwater's dismissal.

I am sort of surprised that the court offered to hear this case because Freshwater had been so thoroughly trounced by the lower courts and this does not represent compelling interest. I am curious to see how they rule.

Freshwater Loses Appeal

According to the Mansfield NewsJournal, John Freshwater, the Mount Vernon teacher fired for teaching creationism has lost his appeal. They write:

In a ruling released Monday, the Fifth District Court of Appeals said the scope of issues it could review were extremely narrow -- limited to whether the trial court abused its decretion [sic].

The ruling said the appeals panel did not find that an arbitrary or unreasonable decision was made.

"To the contrary, the referee's memorandum provides a well-reasoned and articulated basis for affirming the decision of the board and for the trial court to accept the recommendation of the referee," Judge W. Scott Gwin wrote for the three-judge panel.

The ruling said the referee set aside the Tesla coil incident, considering that case closed, but found multiple incidents where Freshwater repeatedly violated the Constitution, acted in defiance of orders by his superiors and failed to employ objectivity in his teaching of a variety of science subjects.

This is probably the end of it since I do not believe Freshwater can appeal this.

----------------
Now playing: Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygène, Pt. 2
via FoxyTunes

“Academic Freedom” in Ohio

The Columbus Dispatch reports on the town of Springboro that is attempting to add “supplemental” material to their school curriculum. As the editorial writer (unsigned) points out:

There is no question that those who believe in creationism are sincere. They believe their children are being led astray, and that, taught evolution, they will question the very bedrock of their family’s faith.

Kelly Kohls, a Springboro board member pushing for creationism in the classroom, said she is doing so as a concerned parent.

“Creationism is a significant part of the history of this country,” she told the Dayton paper, “ It is an absolutely valid theory and to omit it means we are omitting part of the history of this country.”

She could take a lesson from another small community that exposed its students to “intelligent design,” a kind of creationism dressed up to look more scientific.

The reference is, of course, to the Dover, Pennsylvania trial in 2005, which was a rout for evolution education supporters.The editor fears that such a trial would come to Springboro in no time, were the materials added. They are probably right. Such a trial may be brewing in Livingston Parrish, Louisiana, as well. What is happening is that local school boards are interpreting the latitude of the academic freedom legislation to allow supplemental material as license to teach creationism.

Gee, who didn't see that coming?

----------------
Now playing: Paul Desmond - Samba De Orpheu
via FoxyTunes

John Freshwater Files an Appeal

From Dean Narciso of the Columbia Dispatch:

John Freshwater has appealed last month's decision by the Mount Vernon school board to fire him for teaching creationism and religious doctrine in his middle-school science classroom.

The 33-page appeal, filed in Mount Vernon Common Pleas Court on Tuesday, argues that state laws and school procedures protecting Freshwater's rights were violated, a hearing referee's conclusions were flawed and the school's principal contributed to confusion and poor communication of school rules.

Not sure what the appeal will bring up that the case did not, but I will be curious to find out.

----------------
Now playing: Malcolm Dalglish - Northumbrian Lullabye
via FoxyTunes

Freshwater Documents up at NCSE

The National Center for Science Education has all of the documents concerning the John Freshwater case up on their site here. It is quite an interesting read.

----------------
Now playing: Oystein Sevâg - Children's Song
via FoxyTunes.

Things Getting Worse For Freshwater

Panda's Thumb is reporting that more sanctions are in the offing against R. Kelly Hamilton, John Freshwater's attorney. Specifically, these have to do with who owes the court costs. As reported at PT:

Further, this Court should order Attorney Hamilton to pay the expenses incurred by Defendants. “Rule 37 permits a court to order the attorney who advised the conduct necessitating a motion to compel to pay the expenses thereby incurred… when it is clear that discovery was unjustifiably opposed principally at his instigation.” Id. at *19-20 citing Humphreys Extermination Co. v. Poulter, 62 F.R.D. 392, 395 (D. Md. 1974). For the foregoing reasons, it is clear that Attorney Hamilton controlled the disposition of his clients’ discovery responses. Attorney Hamilton chose not to call Defendants’ counsel to notify them that responses were in the mail and chose not to file for an extension of time. It was Attorney Hamilton who did not work with Defendants’ counsel to provide adequate discovery in a timely fashion.

Basically, he didn't do his job. Sadly, that affects John Freshwater in a big way. While I had no sympathy for his case, this just seems to be incompetence on the part of his lawyer.

----------------
Now playing: Todd Rundgren - An Elpee's Worth Of Tunes
via FoxyTunes

More on the Freshwater Case

A reader sends a link to an "Accountability in the Media" page about the Freshwater case. Seems like funny business all around.

----------------
Now playing: Peter Gabriel - Slow Water
via FoxyTunes

More Bad News for Freshwater

The teacher that was fired from his teaching position in Mount Vernon, Ohio, now has more to overcome in his bid for reinstatement. The Columbus Dispatch has a story which contains the following:

Incoming students to John Freshwater's eighth-grade science class were asked if they could survive in a course where textbooks were used only partially and whether religion was important to them, according to questionnaires Mount Vernon school officials found in his classroom.

An attorney for the school district introduced the forms today as evidence that Freshwater should be fired from his teaching job.

The forms, completed at the start of the school year, were discovered after Freshwater was accused in early 2008 of teaching creationism and intelligent design in addition to science, said David Millstone, the attorney representing the school district.

The Mount Vernon school board, in a 2008 vote, said it intended to fire Freshwater for promoting religion in the classroom, failing to remove religious materials including his personal Bible, and burning crosses on students' arms. He first is entitled to an independent hearing after which a referee will make a recommendation to the board.

Things would probably have gone better for him if he hadn't been caught in a fib:

Freshwater has denied the allegations against him, saying this month that he might have talked about religion in the classroom to illustrate how bias and "faulty science" can affect the learning process.

[Attorney David] Millstone asked Freshwater today whether he had ever surveyed incoming students. Freshwater said he hadn't.

But when he was shown at least two completed student questionnaires, he studied them closely and, after a long pause, replied, "It appears like you have gone through my room and taken some stuff out."

Nice.

----------------
Now playing: Dan Fogelberg - Icarus Ascending
via FoxyTunes