Recently in Assault on Education Category

This was the last of three October hearing sessions. The next sessions are scheduled for November 17-19.

The highlight of today was testimony by Taylor Strack, a student in Freshwater’s class, who corroborated Zach Dennis’ testimony about how the students’ arms were positioned and what stopped the shock that Freshwater was supplying via the Tesla coil.

Taylor Strack Direct testimony

Taylor Strack was a student in the 8^th grade science class at the time the alleged burning of Zachary Dennis’ arm occurred, and she saw the procedure followed. That came out in cross examination; first is her direct testimony by R. Kelly Hamilton, Freshwater’s attorney.

With all precincts reporting, the two new Board of Education members are Paula Barone and Steve Thompson, who finished in what was nearly a dead heat, 3,476 votes for Barone and 3,477 votes for Thompson, or 25% each. The two incumbents, Watson (19.6%) and Hughes (7.4%) , came in 4^th and 5^th, respectively, with Robert Kirk in third place with 23%.

It’s a little hard to interpret this outcome. On the one hand, the two incumbents (Watson and Hughes) were defeated, but on the other hand the ‘ticket’ of Thompson and Kirk, who closely associated themselves in the campaign, was split. From the point of view of the handling of the Freshwater affair the results are inconclusive. Barone was perceived as supporting the Board’s handling, and in fact her son Joe testified for the Board in the administrative hearing and Paula addressed a Board of Education meeting about it last year. So I can’t clearly interpret it in either direction if it’s taken as a referendum on the issue of Freshwater’s situation. If one adds what might be crudely interpreted as the pro- vs. anti-Freshwater vote (Thompson+Kirk vs Barone+Watson+Hughes), the split is 48% pro to 52% anti. That’s torturing the data a fair amount–“pro” and “anti” are crude designations and there were other issues in the campaign. But it’s suggestive of the kind of split there is in the community.

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Mt. Vernon voters elect two members of the five-member Board of Education tomorrow, and I’ll be very interested to see the results. Two incumbents, current Board President Ian Watson and Steve Hughes, are running, as are Paula Barone, a former teacher and Mt. Vernon City Council member; Steve Thompson, a vice president in a major local company; and Robert Kirk, an administrator at the Knox County Career Center (formerly Joint Vocational School). To the extent that the election is interpreted as a referendum on the handling of the Freshwater situation, Watson, Hughes, and Barone are generally perceived as supporting the current Board’s actions and Thompson and Kirk are seen as opposing the current Board’s handling of the affair.

The main publicly debated issue in the election is finances, with Thompson and Kirk charging fiscal mismanagement on the part of the current Board and Watson in particular defending the record of the current Board.

Thompson and Kirk are out-spending the others by a large margin, as much as an 8-1 margin according to mid-October filings, and there are indications that the disparity has grown since then. Kirk has had to return some illegal corporate donations to his campaign, and questions have been raised about his having possibly commingled personal and campaign funds. So far no official body is acting on the allegations to my knowledge.

I won’t venture to predict the outcome, though I know what I’m hoping for. I’ll post an addendum to this post tomorrow night when the outcome is clear.

On Thursday, October 29, the morning saw Tim Keib, former assistant principal and for a time interim principal of the middle school, continue his direct examination. R. Kelly Hamilton, John Freshwater’s attorney, introduced into evidence an affidavit Keib had signed and walked Keib through it. Keib is a graduate of Cedarville University, a very conservative Christian school in Ohio.

Keib testified that he was in Freshwater’s classroom for a number of 30+ minute observations for evaluation and perhaps 60 to 100 times for a few minutes over the years.

Over the years Keib did a number of evaluations of Freshwater, and testified that he never saw any problematic behavior in Freshwater’s classroom. Asked if he ever saw Freshwater teach creationism, Keib replied that there was “never any direct instruction pertaining to creationism that I heard.” Interesting locution there.

In a series of questions Hamilton pushed the case that Freshwater was using suspect materials in order to teach analysis and objective consideration of multiple hypotheses per the Academic Content Standards, using those materials to see whether students could use the scientific method.

Keib testified that he never saw Freshwater try to push his faith or proselytize students. He never heard Freshwater put down another person’s faith, though he voiced concerns about that to Keib privately. He testified that he never saw Freshwater teaching intelligent design.

The administrative hearing on the termination of John Freshwater resumed Wednesday, October 28, and also met Thursday and Friday. I missed most of Wednesday, but hope to have a summary from another spectator sometime soon. This is a summary of the testimony I heard Wednesday morning.

“Coach” David Daubenmire Direct Examination

The first witness Wednesday was “Coach” David Daubenmire. Daubenmire once taught and coached in the MT. Vernon school system, and then left to teach and coach in London, Ohio, where he and the district were sued by the ACLU for praying with his football players. That case was settled out of court just before going to trial, with the district paying costs. Daubenmire left teaching in 2000 to found Pass the Salt Ministries. He claims a Ph.D. in “scriptural psychology” from some school – possibly Faith Bible College in Missouri. He also claims to be an adjunct professor at Mt. Vernon Nazarene University, where he taught a couple of continuing education classes for teachers, one a two-day workshop on religion in the classroom that Freshwater attended in the early 2000s. That class used a text called Finding Common Ground, which appears to be an eminently respectable guide to religion in public schools and First Amendment issues. A copy was introduced as an exhibit in the hearing.

Daubenmire was also the organizer of “Minutemen United” (whose web site now appears to be defunct; see the pages preserved in the Internet Archive) through which he coordinated picketing at abortion clinics (he testified to that); allegedly photographed license plates of patrons of a nearby strip club and posted them on the web somewhere (I haven’t been able to find documentation of that; see note at the end of this post); and disrupting services at a Baptist church that is accepting of the LGBT community. According to Daubenmire’s testimony, Freshwater joined the Minutemen United Saturday morning picketing at a Columbus abortion clinic several times.

The administrative hearing on the termination of John Freshwater as an 8^th grade science teacher in the Mt. Vernon (Ohio) School District resumed yesterday after a 5 month hiatus. I missed most of yesterday due to a doctor’s appointment, but a friend took notes and will write them up for me sometime soon. I attended the session today (Thursday) and another is scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll likely post an omnibus account over the weekend. Meanwhile, there are news accounts here, here, and here.

It was a tough call given Casey Luskin’s stupidity about Ardipithecus, but we have a winner. In an account of Stephen Meyer’s talk at the University of Oklahoma last week, Jonathan Wells wrote

Furthermore, the similarity of HOX genes in so many animal phyla is actually a problem for neo-Darwinism: If evolutionary changes in body plans are due to changes in genes, and flies have HOX genes similar to those in a horse, why is a fly not a horse?

Hat tip to John Pieret.

The Ohio Supreme Court today denied John Freshwater’s motion for a writ of mandamus to compel Board of Education members to testify at the administrative hearing on his termination. The Court web site says only

09/30/09 DECISION: Upon consideration pursuant to S.Ct.Prac.R. X(5), cause (sic) dismissed

According to a news report (see also here) the justices voted 7-0 to deny the motion. Since it is a procedural issue, the Court will not elaborate in an opinion.

No word yet on what effect that will have on the course of the hearing.

As some will recall, a while back the Lousiana state legislature adopted one of the “Academic Freedom” acts pushed by the creationist lobby. At that time it was clear that the act would open the door to teaching creationism in the public schools of that state.

Now the creationists are going further, rigging the procedure by which classroom materials are evaluated for appropriateness. Barbara Forrest, stalwart in the defense of teaching honest science and the separation of church and state, has a long press release outlining what has happened. [Note: URL now fixed.] From that release:

On September 16, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education [BESE] ignored the recommendations of science education professionals in the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) and allowed the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a Religious Right lobbying group, to dictate the procedure concerning complaints about creationist supplementary materials used in public school science classes under the 2008 Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA).

In other words, the creationists are now the umpires in Louisiana.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon has an excellent post on the press release, as well as a good background post. Read them, and help as you can in Forrest’s efforts.

With all the hagiography going on for conservative “intellectual” Irving Kristol, who died on September 18, let’s not forget one of his many idiotic statements: that Darwinism is on the way out because it “is really no longer accepted so easily by [many] biologists and scientists.”

As Glenn Morton has exhaustively shown, the trope that “more and more scientists doubt evolution” is one of the oldest falsehoods in creationism. But then, Kristol believed that not all truths were suitable for all people, an echo of Martin Luther’s view that lying for his god was acceptable.

Anti-evolution idiocy seemingly ran in the family. In 1959, Kristol’s wife Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote a terrible book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, demonstrating a lack of understanding of biology and a warped view of Darwin’s influence. One perceptive reviewer penned that Himmelfarb had “an advanced case of Darwinitis, a complaint that afflicts those of a literary bent and strong attachments to pre-scientific culture, who find in the theory of evolution a disturbing and mysterious challenge to their values”. Kristol wrote a favorable review of Himmelfarb’s book for Encounter, without bothering to mention that he was Himmelfarb’s husband. So much for Kristol’s ethics.

Read more at Recursivity…

Answers in Genesis is gearing up for a science fair in February 2009 2010. The rules are here. Note that they are parasitic on the Intel Science and Engineering guidelines with two minor exceptions:

3, All projects should be clearly aligned with a biblical principle from a passage or verse.

The student should be able to explain why the verse or passage selected relates to their project. (Students should read the article “God and Natural Law” by Dr. Jason Lisle for an explanation of this concept.)

* Students should consider the context of the verse(s) they are using.

* The verse chosen does not have to directly apply to the project topic (e.g., Scripture does not directly address radio waves), but may simply relate the project to the Creator of the universe.

* Students should read the article “God and Natural Law.”

and

4. Students should be able, with a clear conscience, to sign the AiG Statement of Faith, which upholds the belief in the creation of the universe in six, twenty-four-hour days about 6,000 years ago by the Creator God as revealed in the Bible.

Translation of the “The verse chosen does not have to directly apply to the project topic” is “However my experiment came out, God did it.”

If it weren’t so hot and I weren’t so tired I’d get indignant. But mostly I’m sad: Those kids don’t have a chance. This is part of Ken Ham’s solution to the Already Gone problem he sees: The abandonment of fundamentalism by young people whose doubts start in middle school and high school. Ham’s solution is simple: Lie to them earlier and more often. Pity he isn’t self-aware enough to realize that those doubts begin to arise when kids learn that Ham and their pastor have been lying to them. And that’s the counter to the Hamster: Let ‘em know they’re being lied to in the plainest possible terms.

Hat tip to Dan Phelps.

The NCSE reported on August 13^th that

Chris Comer, whose lawsuit challenging the Texas Education Agency’s policy of requiring neutrality about evolution and creationism was dismissed on March 31, 2009, is now appealing the decision. Formerly the director of science at the TEA, Comer was forced to resign in November 2007 after she forwarded a note announcing a talk by Barbara Forrest in Austin; according to a memorandum recommending her dismissal, “the TEA requires, as agency policy, neutrality when talking about evolution and creationism.” In June 2008, Comer filed suit in federal court in the Western District of Texas, arguing that the policy violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: “By professing ‘neutrality,’ the Agency credits creationism as a valid scientific theory.” The judge ruled (PDF, p. 18) otherwise, however … In her appellate brief, submitted to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Comer asked (PDF, p. 39) the court to “review the record de novo and reverse and vacate the district court’s decision. Specifically, it should grant Comer’s motion for summary judgment, and vacate the grant of summary judgment for defendants, as well as the dismissal of plaintiff’s complaint. At a minimum, this Court should vacate the grant of summary judgment to defendants, plus the order dismissing the complaint, and remand for further proceedings.”

Hat Tip: Tony Whitson’s blog on curriculum-related matters

The hearing on the termination of employment of Mt. Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater was scheduled to resume today, July 24. However, after an hour-long conference this morning among the attorneys and referee, the hearing did not resume and will not resume until sometime on or after September 10, 2009. It seems that the Ohio Revised Code provides that in such a hearing, the subject of the hearing, in this case Freshwater, can elect to not have hearing days scheduled when the schools are not in session, and through his attorney, R. Kelly Hamilton, that choice was made today. In interviews after the aborted hearing Hamilton made it clear that it was his decision as Freshwater’s attorney, not Freshwater’s.

Hamilton said he intends to file a writ of mandamus with the Ohio Supreme Court to compel the Board to issue subpoenas for two Board of Education members, Jody Goetzman and Ian Watson, to testify. He had previously requested that they be subpoenaed, but the Board of Education (the issuing body for subpoenas for the hearing) quashed the subpoenas and the Knox County Court of Common Pleas declined to enforce the (non-existent because they were quashed) subpoenas. See here for that story.

A writ of mandamus is a high priority item for the State Supreme Court – it goes to the head of the queue on the Court’s docket – but the Court is on summer recess now so it’s hard to know when the Court will rule on Hamilton’s motion, which is not yet filed.

More below the fold.

Update 7/11/09:

The situation surrounding the refusal to testify by the Mt. Vernon Board of Education members has been clarified. The Mt. Vernon News reports that according to the Common Pleas judge, the Board of Education quashed the subpoenas for testimony by Ian Watson and Jody Goetzman on the (official) ground that they have no direct knowledge of the allegations made against Freshwater and could therefore only offer hearsay testimony. Quashing the subpoenas basically takes them out of existence, so there were no subpoenas be complied with and so the judge didn’t order compliance with (now) non-existent subpoenas. (I know, I know: I tried to write a cleaner sentence, but I’m tired.) Further,

Since the matter is an administrative hearing, the judge said, the board has the legal authority to issue and quash subpoenas. He added that he has no grounds under law to overturn the board’s decision to invalidate the subpoenas in this case.

R. Kelly Hamilton apparently called the Board Members because he is trying to make the case that there is a conspiracy against Freshwater in which some teachers, administrators, Board Members, and other unnamed people have been trying to get get rid of him for years. Don Matolyak, Freshwater’s pastor, made that allegation around the time the hearing began in October 2008:

In 2003, Freshwater asked the Mount Vernon school board if he and other teachers could “critically examine” evolution in class. The school board said no.

“From that point on, John had a bull’s-eye on him,” said Don Matolyak, Freshwater’s pastor.

The board has carried out a vendetta against Freshwater because he wanted to teach alternative views to evolution, and that offended school-board members who believe in evolution, Matolyak said.

Pam Schehl’s interview with the judge also clarified another matter that’s been hovering out there:

The way the law is structured, Freshwater has the right to appeal whatever decision the board makes regarding his contract termination. If Freshwater does appeal to the court of common pleas at that time, the judge may or may not require additional testimony not presented during the administrative hearing.

So this process may well not be completed within the reign of the current monarch.

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A couple of developments should be noted. First, as you may recall, R. Kelly Hamilton, John Freshwater’s attorney, subpoenaed two members of the Mt. Vernon Board of Education, Ian Watson and Jody Goetzman. They declined to testify, arguing that were they to testify they would have to recuse themselves from subsequently voting on the recommendation of the hearing referee, and that would leave the BoE short of a quorum and it would be unable to act on the recommendation. Hamilton asked the Knox County Court of Common Pleas to compel their testimony, but yesterday the judge declined to do so on the ground that he does not have jurisdiction. I don’t yet know what Hamilton will do next.

Second, Freshwater has recently amended his federal complaint (pdf) that was filed June 9, 2009, to include

213. Plaintiffs incorporate the foregoing paragraphs of this Complaint as if fully restated herein.

214. At the time of Defendants actions Plaintiffs John and Nancy Freshwater were married and continue to be married.

215. As a result of the wrongful and negligent acts of the Defendants, Plaintiffs were caused to suffer, and will continue to suffer in the future, loss of consortium, loss of society, affection, assistance, and conjugal fellowship, all to the detriment of their marital relationship.

Third, the session scheduled for tomorrow, July 10, has been postponed. The hearing is currently scheduled to resume July 24, but given the recent twitchiness of the schedule I’m not counting on it happening. Hamilton may appeal the Common Pleas court decision, and I have no idea how long that might take.

I still have those 50 pages of notes to transcribe on the two days of hearings in May. I hope to get to that one of these days real soon now. :)

John Freshwater’s termination hearing was scheduled to resume tomorrow, June 18, but it has been postponed. Two Board of Education members, Ian Watson and Jody Goetzman, were subpoenaed by R. Kelly Hamilton, Freshwater’s attorney, but have refused to testify on the ground that if they testify in the hearing they’d have to recuse themselves from voting on the recommendation of the hearing referee. Hamilton has asked the Common Pleas Court in Knox County to compel their testimony and the judge has not yet ruled on that request.

I am reminded of James Hutton’s 1788 remark on the age of the earth:

The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end.

And yes, I still have those 50 pages of notes on the two days in May in my backpack.

John Freshwater (search PT on “Freshwater”), the middle school science teacher terminated by the Mt. Vernon, Ohio, Board of Education last year, has filed a federal suit against the Board, two individual Board Members, two current administrators and one former administrator, the independent investigators, and David Millstone, the attorney for the Board. According to the news report

The lawsuit, filed in US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, cites free speech and equal protection violations under the US Constitution. Violations of Ohio Public Policy, religious harassment, retaliation, conspiracy, defamation, and breach of contract are also addressed in the claim filed Tuesday.

As I understand it, the suit was precipitated by the refusal of two Board members, Ian Watson (President of the Board) and Jodi Goetzman, to testify in the on-going administrative hearing on Freshwater’s termination. Apparently if they testify in the hearing the two Board Members would have to recuse themselves from voting on the final recommendation of the hearing referee (it’s a 5-member Board). At least that’s what I’ve heard as the reason for their refusal to testify.

I just received an e-mail from the Center for Inquiry, which begins thus:

Matthew LaClair … has alerted us that his former history teacher, David Paszkiewicz, is at it again. You may recall Mr. Paskiewicz–he’s the one who was recorded by LaClair telling students that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark and if “you reject the Lord’s salvation, you belong in hell” (New York Times, 12/18/06). This time, he is acting as the advisor of a Christian club at Kearny High School (located 10 miles outside of Manhattan in New Jersey), called the Alpha and Omega Club, which has scheduled [a field trip to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, June 5-7].

LaClair, who is no longer a student at the school, learned about the trip from the student newspaper. He evidently alerted the school district’s lawyer and also contacted Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He convinced the school board to postpone the trip till school was out today, June 5, so that the trip would take place entirely out of hours (I infer, therefore, that the trip is no longer an official school field trip). In addition, he got the school board to remove the listing of the Christian club under history and social science.

The Center for Inquiry notes that there are still some troubling problems. School officials initially approved the trip, which suggests to CFI that they were “asleep at the wheel.” CFI adds that

a public school teacher with strong religious convictions and a record of proselytizing is being allowed to serve as the advisor of a religious club and use his position to have a public school approve a patently religious-based fieldtrip.

Religious clubs are permitted in schools, but the adviser is supposed to be “neutral.” CFI questions the teacher’s neutrality since he

has overtly and repeatedly discussed and promoted religious beliefs with his students in the past, and his proposed fieldtrip to the Creation Museum demonstrates that he continues to do so today, dangerously blurring the line between his own personal faith commitments and his obligations as a teacher in a government-funded public school system.

John Lynch, an evolutionary morphologist and historian of anti-evolutionism, dissects the selective history of ID propounded by the Disco ‘Tute’s new faith and evolution site. The pull quote:

If I engaged in such non-contextualized presentation in my classroom, I would rightly be accused of being a bad teacher. More importantly, the audience would receive no indication of how the argument ceased to be scientifically and philosophically tenable and instead became an issue of interest solely to apologists and theologians.

Read the whole thing.

As you may recall, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which recently moved from California to Texas, has brought suit against the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for the latter’s denial of ICR’s application for certification to award a Master of Science Education degree. (In addition to the Texas Citizens for Science analysis linked above also see here for another masterly takedown of that suit.)

What was less publicized was a bill in the Texas State Legislature to pull an end run around the Coordinating Board by exempting ICR’s graduate program from the regulations governing degree-granting institutions in Texas.

Another bill introduced in this legislative session would have restored the ID creationist “strengths and weaknesses” language to the Texas Science Standards.

Both bills have now died due to the adjournment of the Texas legislature. So there’s a bit more hope for Texas: Don McLeroy is out as Chairman of the State Board of Education, the creationist “strengths and weaknesses” language is not in the standards, and the ICR is still not certified to award phony graduate degrees in science education.

On the other hand, there’s talk of a special session to straighten out some budget matters in Texas, so it’s always possible that one or the other bill will come up again soon.

Hat tip to the National Center for Science Education

The Disco ‘Tute has announced the opening of a new site, Faith+Religion, which purports to discuss the relationship between evolution and religion. A brief survey of the site shows that it has two objectives. First, of course, is the traditional ID goal of denigrating evolutionary theory. Right up on the home page we see a review of Collins’ The Language of God by Moonie Jonathan Wells that says

Collins’s defense of Darwinian theory turns out to be largely an argument from ignorance that must retreat as we learn more about the genome–in effect, a Darwin of the gaps.

Sure thing, Jonnie. Wells knows more about the scientific implications of new genetic knowledge than the former head of the Human Genome project. Yup.

Sorry for the delay in posting on the most recent days of the hearing in early May. I’ve been up to my eyebrows in alligators for the last few weeks. I’ve got 50 pages of notes on the most recent two days of the hearing but haven’t had the 10 or 12 hours to spare to write them up. Soon, I think. Meanwhile, the Mt. Vernon News ran stories on those days here, here, and here.