The Center for Inquiry - News & Updates
June 6, 2009
Matthew LaClair, president of the Center for Inquiry's campus outreach initiative, 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 an interesting and troubling fieldtrip.
It seems that the club has scheduled a fieldtrip June 5 through June 7 to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. LaClair learned about the fieldtrip about two weeks ago while reading the Kearny High School newspaper. Flabbergasted by what he had discovered, LaClair began his own investigation, discovering that the educational rationale provide by Paszkiewicz for this trip was to expose students to “the science behind creationism.” With that justification, it was approved by the Department Head and the Principal, as well as the Board of Education.
LaClair immediately raised a protest by contacting the Board attorney of the Kearny School District. With the help of Barry Lynn (of Americans United) and the law firm of Willkie, Farr, and Gallagher, LaClair was successful in convincing the school board to postpone the beginning of the trip, thereby assuring that students and faculty would only be involved outside of school hours. LaClair was also successful in getting the Kearny School District to remove from their Web site the Christian Alpha and Omega Club listing under the ostensibly secular “History and Social Science” department.
Troubling issues remain however.
For one thing, these events suggest that school administrators were seriously asleep at the wheel.It took a 19 year old student, who doesn’t even go to the school anymore, to find out, investigate, and raise questions about the trip. The Department Head and Principal both saw the initial field trip request form, and did nothing. The Board of Education either was not watching closely enough or did just not care. Either way, they approved the trip.
In a letter sent to Kearny School Board attorney Kenneth J. Lindenfelser from the law firm of Willkie, Farr, and Gallagher (a firm retained by the LaClair family in the past) attorney Richard Mancino writes: “We are disappointed to find that the administrators of Kearny High School have so cavalierly acquiesced in conduct that, once again, threatens to trespass the boundary between church and state. This is all the more surprising in light of the prior experience with Mr. Paszkiewicz which led to the School Board’s entering into the 2007 Settlement and endorsing the training on the impermissible promotion of religion.”
What we have now is a situation where 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. It is permissible, under certain conditions, to have religious clubs in public schools, but their faculty advisors are supposed to be neutral. The School Board has apparently decided that Paszkiewicz can be a "neutral” advisor to the Alpha and Omega Club, but his ability to remain neutral seems questionable at best, especially in light of his past behavior. Paszkiewicz 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.
The Center for Inquiry is urging school administrators and the Kearny School Board to carefully investigate what appears to be a blatant disregard on the part of Mr. Paszkiewicz for the Establishment Clause and the constitutional constraints it places on proselytizing to students on behalf of his own personal religious beliefs.
This article was found at:
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/
In God We Teach
ReplyDeleteA film by vic Losick, “In God We Teach” tells the story of a high school student who secretly recorded his history teacher in class, and accused him of proselytizing for Jesus. The teacher, in danger of losing his job strenuously denied it. The specifics of the controversy lead directly to the church & state arguments that are in the news this election year. With Stephen Colbert, Alan Dershowitz, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others. Please feel free to stream, download, share, and embed the film for non-commercial use. go to http://ingodweteach.com/
Are teachers allowed to express their personal opinions in the classroom?
Are teachers allowed “academic freedom”?
And can competing theories be taught alongside evolution in a public classroom?
These and other questions are the focus of the full-length documentary, “In God We Teach," which follows the “separation of church and state” controversy played out in a very public feud between a high school student and his history teacher in Kearny, NJ, a blue-collar, all-American town within sight of downtown New York.
While most Americans claim to understand the concept of “separation of church and state,” few are sure of what is actually legal, and what is not when it comes to the public school classroom. And the misunderstandings continue. Isn’t America a Christian state founded on Judeo-Christian values, a single nation indivisible under God and whose currency stipulates that in God we trust?
The role of religion had been central in American society from its founding to the present day, and remains a contentious topic in American life and politics. Passions run high on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, embryonic stem-cell research, and the “ground-zero mosque.”
While these religion-based culture wars continue, “In God We Teach” explores the way in which diverse opinions on the role of religion in the public space conflict and clash in our everyday lives.
With discussion and analysis from such distinguished commentators as Alan Dershowitz, Barry Lynn, Kenneth Miller, Neil deGrasse Tyson and John Whitehead.
http://vimeo.com/42096972