That math teacher sounds inept at best, and offensive as well.

There is a place for discussion of different ideologies in high school, but not in math class and not in the form of attempted indoctrination.

The major difference between the feminist math teacher and the proselytizing Christian history teacher is that the US Constitution prohibits government agents from promoting any religion while discharging their official duties. The Constitution says nothing about teachers being inept or propagandizing for a cause during class time.

I agree that the math teacher behaved improperly, but the standards applied in that instance would essentially be the school district’s or state’s regulatory code. And common sense.

The legal standards to be applied against the history teacher are parts of the highest law of our nation. He violated one of our core American civic values. That makes his violation of greater concern, even though there may be examples of lousier teachers out there.

Please cite an example of a self-professed atheist that believes in hell or a 6000 year old earth. I’m sure there is an organization for this type of atheist of some sort.

Feminism does not equal atheism any more than it equals christianism or buddhism. She may have been a christian offended that she was made as a helper to Adam. I’ve talked to atheist females that dislike the idea that man was created first according to christian mythology. I’m not the one making excuses for her. If she taught misinformation in math then she was in error and she could have been a xian but I don’t know. The history teacher acted inappropriately as I’ve concluded. He spouted nonsense that has nothing to do with actual history.

I think we agree that he was wrong and I don’t care if he is a christian just that he espoused things found in xianity which are completely irrelevant for any history class other than mythology history class. I guess he should have kept his Christianity to himself in the public square is my best idea to a solution.

But she didn’t have a belief system…

So is the action the result of the belief system, or was the guy just acting inappropriately and the behavior manifested itself through his belief system…??

That he is a loud and vocal Christian, and one who promotes his Christianity in the public sphere, means that I not only get to call him out on his inappropriate behavior as a teacher, but I get to call him out on his hypocrisy as a Christian.

It’s not making excuses for him. It’s finding him twice as bad as you do.

It’s at:
http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair.html

Just in case my attempt at a link doesn’t work, for cutting and pasting the cite is: http://thecanessacorner.blogspot.com/2006/12/letter-from-paul-laclair.html

Teachers in public schools are agents of governmental entities. And no government agent has the right to attempt to indoctrinate anyone, especially captive minor students, into religious beliefs.

Allen, the teacher was not simply “wasting time.” (Few students would care about that, I would guess.) This teacher was actively interfering with the students’ Constitutional rights not to be coerced into receiveng religious intstruction from the government.

Don’t pretend even for a moment that this type of proselytizing in a public school classroom is either instructive or harmless. Children should not be subjected to religious indoctrination by figures of authority such as this so-called teacher.

I do, however, enjoy Allen’s coinage of “malarchy”! At first I just thought it might be a typo for “malarkey” but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to be that “malarchy” perfectly described the type of governmental interference with religion that the teacher indulged in. I’m going to start using that word!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97l16HvrwH8

Siamang, you might get beaten up if you did that.

Because if kids are fair game, and a teacher does that to my kid, I’m looking up that teacher’s sunday school and paying a visit sunday morning. I’m showing up with a big stack of Harry Potter books and handing them out, each one with a big fat pamphlet as a handy bookmark.