Ohio Supreme Court upholds the firing of a creationist science teacher

Ohio’s Supreme Court upheld the firing of an eighth-grade science instructor who taught creationism instead of evolution to his students.

The court issued a 4-3 ruling Tuesday that agreed with an appeals court and the trial court that teacher John Freshwater had failed to comply with orders to remove religious materials from his classroom.

The court said that was enough to spur Freshwater’s dismissal, so it didn’t even need to rule on whether the teacher impermissibly imposed his religious views in the classroom.

“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.”


Read more at the Raw story

This case was getting some publicity for a while there were people saying they thought if the teacher won the case then creationism would have a solid foothold in public school. Well I didn’t think there was a chance of that it looks cut and dry to me. He was tasked with teaching a curriculum and failed to do it.

There are laws against teaching any particular religion in school. It may interfere with others beliefs. They are supposed to be conditioning kids to believe in our screwed up government and fake economy, not teach religion.

Really? 4 to 3? That's way too close. Creationism does not belong in a science classroom. If you can't see that then you shouldn't be teaching science in the first place.

This is copy of a reply of mine in another similar topic-ed thread, but I feel it needs to be said:

Here is an easy solution: Put evolution in a biology class under faculty of science, put creationism in a theology class under faculty of philosophy. Have an elective for those who want it called the debate class for those who want to vent their opinions can vent, problem solved.

This whole shove creationism into a science class is nothing but a deliberate provoking move by the religious, and denying creationism being taught or brought up at all in school by the pro evolutions/science crowd is seen provocative by the religious (Keep science to science yes, but to ban teaching of theological views from school entirely, really? How is that not also provocative?). All of this in my opinion is a deliberate political show, so people pore their energy into this instead of considering serious topics, for example political corruption or the equality gape. Case closed.