Teacher in trouble

MT. VERNON, Ohio – It’s the kind of story that turns heads and stomachs alike, especially in a small town: A popular middle school science teacher known for strong religious beliefs is charged with branding the shape of a cross onto the forearm of an eighth-grader.

The teacher is in big and possibly career-ending trouble, a quiet college town is bitterly divided and, rightly or wrongly, the Bible is at the center of it.

The case of John Freshwater, a 21-year veteran of Mt. Vernon City School District, has split this pleasant central Ohio community into squabbling camps – those who see Freshwater as a heroic father figure, persecuted for his Christian beliefs, and those who condemn him as a religious predator promoting creationism, in violation of school policy.

Freshwater, 52, who keeps a personal Bible on his desk, has vehemently denied branding anyone and insists he teaches evolution.

“There’s a battle of ideology going on here,” says Don Matolyak, pastor of Trinity Worship Center and a Freshwater supporter. “I believe the ultimate issue is the Bible on the desk.”

No way, argues Beth Murdock, who runs a downtown bakery.

“This makes us look like a bunch of hicks, and that’s not what this is,” Murdock says.

“I don’t think he meant to burn anybody. He got some bad counsel to make this all about the Bible and God. All he needed to do was say he was sorry, but he wouldn’t do that.”

Around town, there are some not-so-quiet suggestions that the unidentified child made the story up or that the photo of the child’s forearm was doctored.

Others say Freshwater, who teaches creationism and intelligent design at Matolyak’s church, has been pushing his personal religious agenda in the public school for years.

In 2003, Freshwater proposed a policy to “critically analyze evolution,” which the school board rejected.

An investigative report says he still “challenged kids to question (Charles) Darwin,” the English naturalist who formulated the theory of evolution.

The report also cited work sheets given to students that ask, “Is there an I.D. (intelligent design) involved?”

All this is prelude to a hearing Tuesday at which a referee will consider the board’s recommendation that Freshwater, who has been suspended without pay, be fired.

The alleged branding occurred last December during a classroom science experiment. Freshwater was using an electrostatic device common in science classroom demonstrations on identifying the color of gases.

Freshwater told investigators, according to an independent probe, that students often ask if they could touch the device, which carries high voltage but low current.

On that day, several students volunteered, including one unidentified child whose parents complained that the crosslike mark left a “burn that remained on their child’s arm for three or four weeks,” the report said. The parents are suing Freshwater and the school system.

The alleged branding has overshadowed a more complex story of religious beliefs and public education. Freshwater supporters argue that religious freedom is on trial here, along with the teacher.

The school district begs to differ.

“To try to put this in the context of Scopes would not be appropriate,” says David Millstone, attorney for the school board, referring to the Tennessee teacher tried in 1925 for teaching evolution.

“This is about the safety and well-being of students and protecting their constitutional rights to get an education,” Millstone says.

Mt. Vernon is a politically conservative town of 14,000 people, about 50 miles northeast of Columbus.

“Religion in this area is a very emotional subject,” says school Superintendent Stephen Short.

The town is home to several thriving manufacturers and Mt. Vernon Nazarene University. A few miles down the road, in Gambier, is Kenyon College, founded in 1824 to educate clergymen “for frontier America,” according to its Web site. Its alumni include President Rutherford Hayes, author E.L. Doctorow and actor Paul Newman.

Freshwater’s case has strained the eclectic community.

Lori Miller, a mathematics teacher at the middle school, says Freshwater is being singled out for his religious beliefs.

Miller says she keeps a Bible on her desk and, like Freshwater, has posters on her classroom walls with religious themes. Other teachers have Bibles in their classrooms, she says.

“Nobody’s ever told me to remove my Bible or to remove the other religious material hanging on my walls,” Miller says.

Freshwater is teaching children to ask questions, she says, “and not just to take what a teacher said as a fact.”