Blue Collar Scientist

I’ve previously posted about John Freshwater, the teacher at a Mt. Vernon, Ohio school who is accused of mutilating students by burning religious imagery into their flesh. Yesterday, Blake Stacey left a comment to that post pointing out a new story in the Columbus Dispatch, which has more details about the allegations.

The tool a student says his science teacher used to burn a cross on his arm comes with a warning: Never touch or come in contact with the high voltage output of this device.

When the boy’s parents complained, administrators at Mount Vernon Middle School told John Freshwater, the school’s eighth-grade science teacher, to lock up or remove the BD-10A High Frequency Generator from the classroom. About the same size and shape as a power screwdriver, its tip puts out up to 50,000 volts of electricity.

Science teachers use the generator to ionize gases in a test tube so that students can identify them by their glowing colors.

When I made my original posting, I was struggling to think of what kind of “electric shock machine” (that’s the phrase used in the story I quoted at the time) could have been at issue here. I must have gotten hung up on the idea that the machine was made for the purpose of administering electrical shocks - I had electroshock therapy devices and all kinds of other, stranger things going through my head. But the Dispatch story identifies exactly what was used - and it is something I’ve used myself.

It is basically a Tesla coil, packaged up in a nice, convenient flashlight-like enclosure. They are used industrially to test for pinhole leaks and to test welds, but if you have a very rarified gas inside a glass container, you can use it to ionize the gas and cause it to give off pretty colors. The principle is exactly the same as the neon sign advertising Alaskan Amber at your local pub¹, and this application of the device is often used to demonstrate ionization states and excitation emission in a physics class. If you’ve used this kind of device for instructional purposes, you will certainly have noticed the smell of ozone surrounding its use.

I have used this device instructionally, and in a moment of carelessness, I once burned myself with one. My forearm made contact with the electrode of the device for about half or three-quarters of a second - this necessarily being an estimate. This experience wasn’t too painful at the time, on the order of getting a good strong static shock after shuffling your feet on the carpets. But it did leave one hell of a welt that got more and more painful over the course of the next three or four days. My recollection is that the small wound stayed painful for a week or so. Eventually the welt that was raised went down, scabbed over, and after about two weeks, the scab fell off. I had a red mark that persisted for about two or three months. It was by no means a pleasant experience. But it wasn’t all that severe; I’m a grown-up and I can take the consequences of my own brief clumsiness.

The issue here is whether middle school children should be forced to endure the same experience by an adult who has been given power over them. And the answer is obviously no.

The maker of the device is quoted in the article as saying:

“We have instructions to warn people that it’s not a toy,” said Cuzelis, who owns Electro-Technic Products in Chicago. “If this device is directed for seconds (on the skin), that’s a clear misuse of the product.”

He also points out that he’s not heard of severe injuries caused by the device, which I can readily understand, because when I got in touch with the business end of this thing, I dang near threw it across the classroom from my reflexive reaction to the pain. They’ve never been sued over its use, and I’d say that’s a result of the device being straightforward to use, sensibly designed, and clearly labeled with a warning not to use it on skin or flesh.

The Dispatch article says that the investigation the school is undertaking will be finished by the end of this month. The school has apparently already acknowledged that Freshwater was in possession of the device he is accused of using to burn students; the principal wrote a letter warning Freshwater not to shock students with the device in January, following a December 10, 2007 complaint from a parent. Freshwater has hired a lawyer and refuses to talk about the allegations.

I’m looking forward to learning the results of this investigation at the close of May.

1. If you can’t get Alaskan Amber at your local pub, don’t despair. Really. [↩]

I grew up in Ohio, and for several years in the mid 90’s, I had the opportunity to drive through the town of Mt. Vernon on a fairly regular basis. It was a quaint, old-fashioned midwest town, with a real town square, a drugstore with a soda fountain right out of the 50’s, and everything else you’d imagine in a town that looked essentially like a time capsule, or a movie set, from my parents’ generation.

So it wasn’t really a surprise to me when I heard through the media that a middle school teacher in Mt. Vernon was lying in his classroom about evolution…

In one class, Freshwater used Lego pieces to describe the beginning of the world. He dumped the pieces, then asked students if the Legos could assemble by themselves, said Joe Stuart, 18, assistant editor of the high-school newspaper.

…and forcing his religion on his students…

On Monday, Middle School Principal William D. White told Freshwater to remove “all religious items” from his classroom by the end of Wednesday.

Freshwater agreed to take down the Ten Commandments from the door of his classroom, posters with Bible verses and Bibles on a shelf. But he refused to remove his personal Bible from his desk when students are in the room.

…because, if anyplace is going to attract religious extremists who are living in a previous century, it would be a town that seemed like it was living in a previous decade.

But what I hadn’t heard before was that middle school teacher John Freshwater has allegedly mutilated and injured his students¹

“We are religious people, but we were offended when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child. The burn was severe enough that our child awoke that night with severe pain, and the cross remained there for several weeks. … We have tried to keep this a private matter and hesitate to tell the whole story to the media for fear that we will be retaliated against.”

So according to this, not only does Freshwater walk around with an “electric shock machine” and painfully burn his students, but he also intimidates them into not telling. These are, if I’m not mistaken, exactly the tactics used by more traditional child abusers. But I’d guess - being blissfully ignorant of this seamy side of human behavior - that most ‘traditional’ abusers avoid branding their victims with religious symbols, due to the sort of obvious evidence that a brand would constitute.

It is also worth noting that Freshwater doesn’t have the support of his co-religionists - he’s a radical, an extremist, and others don’t want anything to do with his antics:

[School Superintendent Steve] Short said it is alleged that Freshwater used his classroom to advance religion and that he teaches his own beliefs from the Bible and not the approved curriculum. In the fax, the parents also said, “We are Christians who practice our faith where it belongs, at church and in our home and, most importantly, outside the public classroom, where the law requires a separation of church and state.”

Freshwater may believe whatever he wants, but he needs to be fired because of his behavior.

(Hat tip to BCS’er Joe. Just Joe.)

1. Without, it hardly needs be said, their, or their parents’, consent. [↩]