Kuddos to kid for exposing public teacher's Baptist preach-speak in school!!!

I watched Matthew LaClair yesterday on Anderson Cooper, and was very impressed with how this New Jersey high school Junior expressed his feelings about being proselytized to by his public school History teacher, David Paszkiewicz. The teacher (and Baptist Youth Minister) lied when originally asked if he was preaching to kids in class, thankfully Matthew recorded the evidence. Matthew said he was surprised how many of the town folks in Kearny N.J. were angry at him, lining up with the teacher, and even calling for his suspension suggesting that it was entrapment. Anderson revealed after the interview that he was getting death threats! WTF is it with those people?! I have two teenage kids in school and if I heard of similar preach-speak coming from our public school I'd go ballistic.

I wonder how Paszkiewicz supporters would feel if a teacher was advocating from a Muslim perspective, or an Atheist's perspective. If that teacher wants to preach, he should go work at a private Christain school. Damn the hypocrisy! This kid rocks for having the courage to reveal that it is not cool in school for a teacher to preach from the Bible (or any religion)... period!

:applause:

* * * * * * *

NY Times 12/18/06

KEARNY, N.J. — Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew’s complaint, administrators have said they have taken “corrective action” against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

Full story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/18/nyregion/18kearny.html?_r=2&ei=5094&en=fa807250c191d8c8&hp=&ex=1166418000&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin

Its amazing how these bastards who pick and choose in the bible take every advantage of their constitutional liberties while daily working to destroy the document. Entrapment my fucking ass. He was attempting to recruit for a religion in a public school, period. That is anti-american. Fire his ass, no doubt he can find employment at a church which doesn't pay taxes.

by subjecting them, as a captive audience, to his religious rantings. He does not belong in a public school.
x(

cause it spits in the face of the real abused. So what, the kids got subjected to some religious insanity. Is it a violation of the teacher's agreement not to bring religion into public schools, yes and the teacher should either be fired or severely reprimanded from doing that again.

Is it abuse, no. Let's not be too over dramatic about that. I, for one, think it is a valuable lesson for the students to have witnessed. A beautiful exercise of free speech vs. the violation of church and state.

Perhaps the concept of verbal abuse is a bit obtuse, but it is just as illegal as physical abuse when it creates a hostile environment for minors as well as co-workers in the workplace. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to do anything about.

This young man did the right thing. He recorded it. He exposed it. And now the school district better do something about it or they will end up coughing up a shitload of taxpayers dollars for failing to prevent a hostile environment in their school.

Yeah, legally, it's abuse. Because in reality, it's ideas that leave the deepest scars.

telling high school students they are going to hell if they don't accept Jesus is laughable and I imagine (after working in a high school my whole adult life) that they wrote him off as a kook.

"oh my... a scary idea" Come on. Stop treating young adults as babies. They will be exposed to many scary ideas in their life.

And I doubt it would constitute LEGAL abuse. And you are confusing the issues. What the teacher did was wrong. Was it abuse? NO. If you think you can wrap kids with cotton, you are doing the a severe disservice. If this is a projection of your own history or experience, you are an adult now. Deal with it.

That said, I do think appropriate administrative actiion should be taken and the teacher fired or forbidden to continue to preach his religion.

If you read this article and others on the actions of this young man, you'll see that this wasn't a one-time deal. This was repetitive and had been reported to have been going on for longer than this school year. Only the administration wouldn't believe the students over the teacher.

Secondly, whether or not the class in general wrote him off as a kook is immaterial. Did he target a particular religion (my Baptist sister-in-law continually bashes Catholics)? DId he work to shame those who don't attend services of any kind? How did the students believe their own beliefs or their reaction to his preaching would affect their grades? Was preference given to those students who showed agreement? Were students who didn't respond as he saw fit singled out for "punishment"? Did their own beliefs influence their grades or the amount of respect they received in the classroom?

Verbal abuse is about a power differential. If my neighbor tells me I'm going to hell, so what? I flip him the finger and walk away. If my boss tells me I'm going to hell because of what I believe or don't believe, that's an entirely different story. Whether or not this teacher gave his "lectures" perpetually, he created a hostile environment by engaging in verbal abuse. And apparently I have to point out it was an environment that students could not escape without causing the ruckus this young man did. According to the laws of workplace abuse and, believe it or not, child abuse, the actions of the teacher constitute abuse in my state. As it is based on case law, I suspect many other states as well. You can take semantic issue with the law, but it clearly is the law. (I know several people on school boards in the area who understand the importance of dealing with these kinds of accusations quickly and thoroughly. They've heard the horror stories of lawsuits and bad press even when the administration did the right thing.)

This young man not only has a constitutional case but also a case for damages related to his education and ability to learn if he can demonstrate a hostile environment based on verbal abuse existed/continues to exist. It doesn't matter what the subject was of the teacher's "harassment" but that the harassment occurred. It is separate from the religious/constitutional question entirely.

As for projection, look to yourself, sir. I am merely a messenger.

on edit: the scary idea is not that "you belong in hell" but that you can be forced to agree with something you don't just to get along, to not be targeted, to get good grades or whatever. It's selling yourself in a bargain not of your own choosing. The word is oppression, sir. And it is indeed an idea that can leave the deepest scars.

“The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.”

He felt uncomfortable, not violated, not abused. Surely this asshole teacher needs to be taken to task and god willing, never teach again. Also, this does not recount repeated attacks, the student, quite smartly, taped them because "out of fear that the officials would not believe the teacher made the comments". NO long history of harassment, no phantoms. Matthew was smart. But he was not abused. Kudos to the young man.

It is not either or with me as it is with you. You want blood, feel somehow personally affected, when I truly doubt that you even read the article, cause if you did you would realize the rubbish I am responding to is no where near the facts of the article. Now if you are privy to other reliable information, I would be more than willing to look at it. Please provide it and I will be more than generous in conceding a point. But if you are going to come to some histrionic conclusion based on the fabrications of your mind, contrary to the facts of the article, well, it is your call.
Sir
Maam
Whatever

Here are samples from a blog in Kearney, where folks slam this brave kid for what he did. This is a blog quote from Kearney On The Web - a (supposedly) local blog in the area where folks discuss issues of the day. Thankfully, a few folks try to speak reason. Check out some of the posts trying to justify this fundamentalist wacko teacher.

:puke:

It does provide insight into the mentality of fear. Here is a common (though crazy) view:


Premeditated entrapment!!!

How about the administration taking action against this traitor, who should be dropped in the center of Iraq, so he don't have to salute our flag, but help burn it with people like himself!!!!!

He should be suspended for having a recording device in the classroom.


Blog link here:

http://forums.kearnyontheweb.com/index.php?showtopic=2898&st=0


ON EDIT: Corrected my assumption that all the negative blog posts are locals - they could be from anywhere. Did not want to suggest that the town of Kearney itself represents one side or the other.

What, like, givng him a raise? Making his speech part of the permanent school curriculum?

:mad:

In western Virginia, it's standard practice for public school students to be released to attend bible school during the middle of the day, starting in elementary school. (The WashPost did a great article on this a couple years ago; I remember it was on DU.) Often, churches will build classroom trailers on property adjoining the public school to make it easier for stu∂ents to attend.

A friend's father was a school superintendent in one such county in the 80s, and one of his first orders of business was to stop the practice, thinking that the school system migh† want to work on actually educating students. For his efforts, he and his family got death threats (they were under State Police protection for some time), his kids were ostracized by their classmates and teachers, and a local minister threw a punch at him in a Burger King parking lot.

to not voice his personal religious beliefs in a classroom like that. I think it is fine if the full spectrum of spiritual thought is presented, in a neutral manner, in school-in fact, I think the only way to learn how others think is to examine their belief systems. I know when I taught fourth grade I did this as a part of world geography that I was teaching-and the funny thing was I never got a complaint about it. Could it be because I never told the kids what was right and what was wrong?

In a Comparative Religion Class. I agree that examining other's belief systems is valuable. Though as you said ayeshahaqqiqa, it must be presented in a neutral manner. Sounds like you did a good job in the 4th grade keeping right/wrong totally out of the picture. This N.J. teacher was totally in the WRONG for preaching what he thought was "right." I see that as very arrogant; I'd never want a teacher like that working in a public school.

If he had put it in the context of other beliefs. But I do think that if he had prefaced it with "I believe..." then it would have been taken differently. Instead, he expressed his beliefs as fact.

You're a kid who is compelled by law to attend school. You have to take history to graduate. You have a teacher who is supposed to teach you history. But instead your teacher tells you that Muslims go to hell. You're a Muslim. Your teacher has consigned you to hell for what you believe and for who you are. And you are a captive audience to boot. And as your teacher has inherent authority based upon his position, his words are deemed to be fact and likely be accepted by your classmates.

This happened to a classmate of Matthew LaClair. It wasn't him being "too sensitive".

Also, if you got a poor grade in that class, and you didn't go to that fellow's church, how sure could you be that the grade was given because of your work? How sure could you be that your classmate who did attend the teacher's church really earned the A he got?

that he would subject his entire class to regular daily preaching, you know he was giving out higher grades to anyone who responded favorably. And you know he was giving out lower grades to anyone who responded negatively.

You're a kid who is compelled by law to attend school. You have to take history to graduate. You have a teacher who is supposed to teach you history. But instead your Muslim teacher tells you that Christians go to hell. You're a Christian. Your teacher has consigned you to hell for what you believe and for who you are. And you are a captive audience to boot. And as your teacher has inherent authority based upon his position, his words are deemed to be fact and likely be accepted by your classmates.

Guess who'd be getting the death threats then.

They never seem to realize that it protects them way more than it restricts them.

...would it be against DU rules to post it?

I wonder if we should write a letter to the principal demanding that he fire the unpublic school teacher. I know we're not city taxpayers, but I'm sure the school gets federal funds and we're federal tax payers.

and the story does not surprise him.

I heard Matthew this morning on AAR and was very impressed with him. It does sound like he is being harassed now by fellow students. I hope there are at least a few enlightened kids who are supporting him, but he didn't mention any.

On edit-- I can't log onto the Times site-- does it mention in the article that the teacher told a Muslim girl she was "going to hell"?

Since you said you were unable to log on to NY Times. I was able to access article w/o logging on? Here it is anyway.

Link same per original post.

December 18, 2006
Talk in Class Turns to God, Setting Off Public Debate on Rights
By TINA KELLEY
KEARNY, N.J. — Before David Paszkiewicz got to teach his accelerated 11th-grade history class about the United States Constitution this fall, he was accused of violating it.

Shortly after school began in September, the teacher told his sixth-period students at Kearny High School that evolution and the Big Bang were not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven, according to audio recordings made by a student whose family is now considering a lawsuit claiming Mr. Paszkiewicz broke the church-state boundary.

“If you reject his gift of salvation, then you know where you belong,” Mr. Paszkiewicz was recorded saying of Jesus. “He did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he’s saying, ‘Please, accept me, believe.’ If you reject that, you belong in hell.”

The student, Matthew LaClair, said that he felt uncomfortable with Mr. Paszkiewicz’s statements in the first week, and taped eight classes starting Sept. 13 out of fear that officials would not believe the teacher had made the comments.

Since Matthew’s complaint, administrators have said they have taken “corrective action” against Mr. Paszkiewicz, 38, who has taught in the district for 14 years and is also a youth pastor at Kearny Baptist Church. However, they declined to say what the action was, saying it was a personnel matter.

“I think he’s an excellent teacher,” said the school principal, Al Somma. “As far as I know, there have never been any problems in the past.”

-------------------------
EDIT: COPYRIGHT. PLEASE POST ONLY
4 OR 5 PARAGRAPHS FROM THE
COPYRIGHTED NEWS SOURCE PER DU RULES
AND PROVIDE A LINK TO THE NEWS SOURCE.

ASll I can say is UGH-- I can see why my husband left Kearny!

students, and they said this teacher was "preaching" back when they went to school there.

If that teacher wants to preach in school, he should go work for a church-related school, NOT a public school.

If kids want to hear a sermon, they can go to church.

:yourock:

they would know that true Baptists are for separation of church and state ALL THE WAY. They wanted to escape England because the church there was too intertwined with the government. :eyes:

He probably doesn't even know the subject well, and that's why he's filling up the class time with banal, off-topic, preaching.

It's more than church v. state; it's IGNORANCE v. EDUCATION!

Glad to see the Bible belt isn't the only place where wachos run free. Wait, maybe I need to rethink that.

propagate their own mind set.

I know this is true because I taught highschool for 9 years.

As far as the recording without the teacher's knowledge is concerned, all teachers should conduct themselves at all times in the classroom as though they were immediately observable by anyone and everyone.

How the f*ck are they not scientific? Does this history teacher even know what "Scientific" means?

Furthermore, how the f*ck is Noah's f*cking Arc scientific???

As a parent, I'd love to sit in this asshole's class and ream him a new one.

:rofl:

I've not heard that one before. Did t-rex have his own suite?

These people are insane & need to be stopped.

and Mr. Rex also got room service!

what happened to the unicorns....

".. Anderson revealed after the interview that he was getting death threats! WTF is it with those people?! I have two teenage kids in school and if I heard of similar preach-speak coming from our public school I'd go ballistic."

Those psuedo christians calling for death under the guise of Jesus.

Good for this kid..how many more brainwashing liars are out there not getting exposed?

Ever since the Mackris incident he's been a big advocate of not recording people without their prior consent... hehe.

My kids would have had a field day with this guy. Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark? :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Constructing a wooden ship the size of the ark in times of antiquity would require an enormous expenditure of labor and materials. Where did Noah, by all accounts an ordinary man, obtain the resources?

Wooden ships do not withstand violent wind and wave forces very well, and this is particularly true for large wooden ships. The longest modern wooden ships are about 300 feet long, and require steel reinforcing to prevent breaking up.

The contention that a wooden ship 450 feet long could withstand the catastrophic forces postulated in the creationist scenario has to be met with considerable skepticism.

There are over a hundred thousand separate and distinct species of present day birds and land animals. It would be physically impossible for eight persons (Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives) to provide for the care and feeding of all the flies, termites, worms, snails, fleas, bats, frogs, spiders, bark beetles, intestinal parasites, etc, etc.

Then of course we have several hundred species of larger animals that require 50 to 100 pounds of fodder per day: hippos, rhinos, buffalo, elephants, horses, cattle, giraffes, elk. moose, etc, etc. (Not to mention the enormous grazing dinosaurs that some creationists believe were sequestered in the ark.)

Many, if not most, plants and/or their seeds will not survive a year under water. Did Noah transplant trees from all over the world into tubs to store in the ark, and if so, how did he manage to acquire them?

Don't forget the meat eating animals. How did Noah acquire the tons of meat required for the diet of all those lions, tigers, hyenas, wolves, etc? (Not to mention Tyranosaurus Rex, Allosaurus, and all the rest!) In order for predatory animals like lions, wolves, etc. to survive, they must be outnumbered by their prey by at least a hundred to one. If each grazing animal and each predatory animal were represented by a single pair, then either all the grazing animals would be immediately eaten, or the predatory animals would starve to death, or both. The only other alternative would be for Noah and his descendants to have enough fresh meat stored to feed generations of lions, tigers, wolves, hyenas, foxes, eagles, hawks, etc. This scenario is totally preposterous!

Many animals require special diets. Koalas eat only eucalyptus leaves. Aphids require fresh plants. How would Noah know about these dietary requirements, and how would he obtain food meeting these requirements?

The logistics of stocking the food and feeding the animals is clearly a complete impossibility for eight persons! Just shoveling out the manure would be a total impossibility; tons of food per day necessarily creates tons of manure per day!

Unless all those animals happened to be living in the immediate neighborhood (very unlikely, considering the different habitats of rain forest tree frogs, desert geckos, and polar bears), most of them would have to travel over large distances to get to the ark, a physical impossibility. Besides, what could possibly motivate all those frogs, lizards, snakes, salamanders, dragon flies, spiders, ants, etc to leave their natural habitats and attempt to travel thousands of miles to the ark? How could they possibly make the journey? How would they know how to get there?

The Bible states in Gen 7:4 that the ark was loaded in 7 days. The nine million species of animals extant would would have to board at a rate of 30 animals per second!

Noah sends a dove out to see if there was any dry land. But the dove returns without finding any. Then, just seven days later, the dove goes out again and returns with an olive leaf. But how could an olive tree survive the flood? And if any seeds happened to survive, they certainly wouldn't germinate and grow leaves within a seven day period. (8:8-11)

When the animals left the ark, what would they have eaten? There would have been no plants after the ground had been submerged for nearly a year. What would the carnivores have eaten? Whatever prey they ate would have gone extinct. And how did the New World primates or the Australian marsupials find their way back after the flood subsided? (8:19)

The creationist claim that diversification has resulted in present-day species being far more numerous than the number of species in the ark contradicts their claim that evolution of species could not, and did not, ever take place.

Keeping in mind that hibernation is not merely sleep, but rather a state of suspended animation, just keeping an animal in the dark will not cause it to hibernate. Most animals do not hibernate under any conditions, least of all in a ship violently tossed about under catastrophic storm conditions.

How did all the present-day parasites and diseases survive the flood without decimating the host population?

(reference:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
http://www.fsteiger.com/ark.html )

was a professor at Howard College (Samford) in Birmingham, Alabama about 1930.

He was supposed to give a short speech in the chapel one day, and somebody else took his topic, so he just spoke extemporaneously about doubt.

He ended up telling the kids that he didn't believe in Noah's Ark (being a science teacher, he knew that the guy would have been killed by the acid in the whale's stomach)-- and rebuked a lot of the religious stuff they'd been taught.

He got fired. (It was only 5 years after the Scopes trial, and it was in the buckle of the bible belt!). He got a better job.

The student who made the complaint that got him fired? Was an alumnus of Bob Jones University. The more things change, the more they stay the same!

fudge stripe cookays said: He ended up telling the kids that he didn't believe in Noah's Ark (being a science teacher, he knew that the guy would have been killed by the acid in the whale's stomach)-- and rebuked a lot of the religious stuff they'd been taught.

er, I think you have the dumbassed story about Jonah confused with the other dumbassed story about Noah. I know due to years of systematic dumbing down by my parents and lots and lots of church...

And now I realize it took a huge chunk of valuable space in my brain which could have been filled with actual facts.

I had four years of Catholic school, but I unfortunately have MS, and my brain short circuits way more frequently than I would like these days.

He rebuked both stories, and I had a brain fart while typing. It happens way more than I care to admit.

I'll probably get flamed for this, but everything I've seen/heard leads me to conclude that "youth minister" = "has a thing for teenaged girls/boys."

If this kid has the wherewithal, and our teacher/youth minister has been around for a while, I'll bet he'll find a few more stories to tell--maybe kids who transferred or moved out of the area recently?

than public schools.

He's welcome to his beliefs, but not in a public school. He should never teach in the public school system again.

Sid

who talk of "corrective action" yet have done nothing but allow this wacko to poison the air in his classrooms for 14 years!

Bravo to them for raising such a great kid!:bounce:

good kid

...used to make her class PRAY every day before we got our milk and cookies.

Did you bow your head? No? Then NO MILK AND COOKIES FOR YOU!

Even though at the time I was Catholic (now an avowed atheist), I look back in anger at her manipulation.

Of course, I only learned yesterday that the small town I lived in at the time was a possible Sundown Town, so the blatant violation of the separation of church and state going on in its elementary school is the LEAST of the evils of that hick place.

Schadenfreude moment: I have been told that years later, that kindergarten teacher lost her job for physically assaulting one of her students.

Evil Kumquat

The only reason I suspected this is because my SO lived in a small town in Illinois that posted one of these signs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

from Wikipedia:

In some cases, signs were placed at the towns' borders with statements similar to the one posted in Hawthorne, California which read "Ni*ger, Don't Let The Sun Set On YOU In Hawthorne" in the 1930s.<1>

In some cases, the exclusion was official town policy. In others, the racist policy was enforced through intimidation. This intimidation could occur in a number of ways, including harassment by law enforcement officers.

sorry that I read your great OP too late to recommend it but wait until you read this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2954510

That's mind-boggling.

Thanks for this post and story. I didn't know about it. Brave youngster.