Constitution Teacher Violates the Constitution
by: Rev. DanBefore 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.
The appropriate response to this situation would be for Kearny High School to have an immediate opening for a competent History teacher. What do dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark, the Christian Monopoly on Heavenboundness, Evolution, or the Big Bang have to do with the Constitution of the United States? Why is a public school teacher using the time he should be teaching for evangelism?
You might think that sane, rational people would be asking questions like that. Apparently sane, rational people don’t live in Kearny, New Jersey… it’s full of Jackasses for Jesus:
In this tale of the teacher who preached in class and the pupil he offended, students and the larger community have mostly lined up with Mr. Paszkiewicz, not with Matthew, who has received a death threat handled by the police, as well as critical comments from classmates.
This, however, is the story’s “money quote” (emphasis added):
Greice Coelho, who took Mr. Paszkiewicz’s class and is a member of his youth group, said in a letter to The Observer, the local weekly newspaper, that Matthew was “ignoring the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which gives every citizen the freedom of religion.” Some anonymous posters on the town’s electronic bulletin board, Kearnyontheweb.com, called for Matthew’s suspension.
So, Coelho presumably passed Mr. Paszkiewicz’s United States Constitution class and doesn’t understand the difference between an individual’s right to practice their own religion on their own time, and a public school teacher’s duty to teach the approved course content… which oh-so-obviously hasn’t been effectively done since it’s obvious that Coelho doesn’t understand the First Amendment. Coelho’s statement does nothing but prove that the teacher sucks at his job if, in fact, he ever takes a break from taxpayer-funded evangelism and actually attempts to do it.
I wonder if Coelho would defend a Muslim teacher’s “right to proselytize.”
While science teachers, particularly in the Bible Belt, have been known to refuse to teach evolution, the controversy here, 10 miles west of Manhattan, hinges on assertions Mr. Paszkiewicz made in class, including how a specific Muslim girl would go to hell.
“This is extremely rare for a teacher to get this blatantly evangelical,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit educational association. “He’s really out there proselytizing, trying to convert students to his faith, and I think that that’s more than just saying I have some academic freedom right to talk about the Bible’s view of creation as well as evolution.”
Even some legal organizations that often champion the expression of religious beliefs are hesitant to support Mr. Paszkiewicz.
“It’s proselytizing, and the courts have been pretty clear you can’t do that,” said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a group that provides legal services in religious freedom cases. “You can’t step across the line and proselytize, and that’s what he’s done here.”
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The class started on Sept. 11, and Matthew quickly grew concerned. “The first couple of days I had him, he had already begun discussing his religious point of view,” … “It wasn’t even just his point of view, it went beyond that to say this is the right way, this is the only way. The way he said it, I wasn’t sure how far he was going to go.”
The appropriate place for this “teacher” is the unemployment line.
I wonder if Coelho would defend a Muslim teacher’s “right to proselytize.”
Of course not. ;)
Anyway, I agree. The teacher was proselytizing during school hours. Teachers aren’t supposed to do that. He should’ve been sent packing.
I’d label that as “rhetorical musing.” :)
This is sad. Today, if Thomas Jefferson was a teacher, he would be fired. I can hear it now. “I don’t care if you wrote the constitution. You fired because you exercised you First Amendment right and spoke to the students about your ‘Jefferson Bible’ and said that you are protected by the First Amendment.”
Sad that the First Amendment today means the complete opposite than what the founding fathers intended.
I think your understanding of Thomas Jefferson’s stance on Separation of Church and State is quite flawed. I posted a ton of Jefferson quotes two posts after this one, and greatly appreciate the irony of the fact that you’ve chosen Jefferson as an example of someone who would violate the Constitution by using a Government Institution to advocate any religion over another.
http://outchurched.com/2006/12/20/last-minute-gift-idea.html
I think he’d be appalled that a public school teacher would give a proselytizing lecture on Religion and would be the first in line to send this rogue instructor to the unemployment line.
I think it’s impossible to argue that Jefferson would support a teacher cramming his religious views down students’ throats. While Christians seem to be whining that the teacher’s First Amendment rights were violated, they’re ignoring the fact that the teacher, as an employee of a taxpayer funded institution is obligated to do his job… which is to teach the Constitution, not Religion. I think it’d be shallow at best to argue that Jefferson would think that only Ministers should stick to their subject matter, but that History teachers should have free reign to teach Religion.
“Whenever… preachers, instead of a lesson in religion, put [their congregation] off with a discourse on the Copernican system, on chemical affinities, on the construction of government, or the characters or conduct of those administering it, it is a breach of contract, depriving their audience of the kind of service for which they are salaried, and giving them, instead of it, what they did not want, or, if wanted, would rather seek from better sources in that particular art of science.” -Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815. ME 14:281
> Sad that the First Amendment today means the complete
> opposite than what the founding fathers intended.
I agree. We need to get Christians on board and encourage them to think about the severe and negative consequences of their push towards Theocracy and their Revisionist teachings about Democracy. The Founding Fathers (a majority of whom were Deists, not Christians [as I was quite correctly corrected in the comments on the link above]) would be appalled at the havoc the American Christian Church has wreaked upon the Civil Liberties and the Rights of ALL Americans.
“The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.” -Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
I think the Founding Fathers would be thoroughly disgusted by the Religious Arrogance and Intolerance of Contemporary American Christians.
Separation of Church and State is not a one-way street. The intention was to protect religious institutions from government interference and to protect government from interference from religious institutions.
“The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].” -Thomas Jefferson to Levi Lincoln, 1802. ME 10:305
I refuse to buy into Christian Revisionism, and am deeply saddened that it seems so many other people have. Quite contrarily to the Revisionist History Textbooks I was given while attending Baptist School (ACSI accredited ;) ) as a kid, Jefferson very clearly believed in God, and he also very clearly believed in my right to give God the middle finger.
Jesus, Buddha, Allah, (insert Deity name here), and the Flying Spaghetti Monster belong in Church (or Mosque, Synagogue, Our Heart, etc.), not in the curriculum of taxpayer-funded educational institutions… Unless equal time, respect, and coverage is given to EVERY religion. (It’d seem pragmatic to cover the x-many major religions [x being > 1] instead of EVERY religion. A religion practiced 10 billion years ago by five people doesn’t seem particularly relevant to a broad historical survey.)
Students interested in a religious education should pursue their interest by enrolling a religious educational institution, not a taxpayer-funded one.
Just like most Christians would seriously resent having taxpayer money wasted by a teacher who crammed Islam down students’ throats, I resent the fact that this teacher is violating the Constitution by cramming Evangelical Christianity down students’ throats. I ESPECIALLY resent it because he’s a History teacher whose job it is to TEACH the Constitution. It’s very obvious the teacher has no clue about the subject matter he’s been hired to teach.
If your job is to teach x, and you preach y, you’re not doing your job and you should be replaced by someone can and will teach x.
Rev Dan
If you would “read” the Constitution of the United States you would find out that there is no “Separation of Church and State” mentioned any where. If what I am telling you is not correct than where in the Constitution will you find the words “Separation of Church and State”. Did you know that when Thomas Jefferson was in charge of the schools that the “required texbook” that he used was the “Bible”.
The consequence of accepting what you’re saying is essentially this: The concept of the Trinity is patently false. The word “Trinity” in nowhere to be found in the Bible, therefore it’s a lie. The Godhead is not Triune because the word “Triune” is not in the Bible (and well, there’d be no “Godhead” either… since there’s only Father, Son, and Holy Spook).
If I’m incorrect, and the literal word “Trinity” does appear in Scripture, please provide references (I’d really like to see them… honest injun).
The term “Trinity,” exactly like the phrase “Separation of Church and State,” is a label given to a concept articulated in the source material. You’re absolutely correct that the literal phrase “Separation of Church and State” is not in the Constitution, however, the concept definitely is. The writings of Jefferson clearly indicate his thinking about the bi-directional nature of this separation… to protect one from the other.
“The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man.” -Thomas Jefferson to Jeremiah Moor, 1800.
From “The United States Constitution, what is says, what it means” (a hip pocket guide published by Oxford Press):
“Freedom of Religion: The First Amendment’s free exercise clause allows a person to hold whatever religious beliefs he or she wants, and to exercise that belief by attending religious services, praying in public or in private, proselytizing or wearing religious clothing such as yarmulkes or headscarves. Also included in the free exercise clause is the right not to believe in any religion, and the right not to participate in religious activities.
Second, the establishment clause prevents the government from creating a church, endorsing religion in general, or favoring one set of religious beliefs over another. As the Supreme Court decided in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, the establishment clause was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state,’ although the degree to which government should accommodate religion in public life has been debated in numerous Supreme Court decisions since then.
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The actual “Separation of Church and State” verbiage appears to have come from this 1947 Supreme Court ruling.
In the blog post story above, the public school teacher is paid by taxpayers to teach history, not religion. The teacher can follow the dictates of his heart or religion and basically do whatever the heck he wants outside the classroom. If you’re paid to teach History, it’s your job to teach History.
I know Christians like to play games with language and call it HIStory, but that’s a purely religious perspective; one that belongs in the classroom of a parochial school… not a taxpayer-funded public one.
Part and parcel of our religious freedom is the freedom to not practice a religion.
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“No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.” -Thomas Jefferson: Elementary School Act, 1817. ME 17:425
I’d hazard a guess that the Bible was a “required textbook” since there were relatively few textbooks, or books period. It’s likely that it wasn’t a “required textbook” but rather “the only book available.” It’s kinda hard to learn how to read if there’s nothing to read. Books are now ubiquitous, this wasn’t always the case. If you have evidence to the contrary please provide citations.
For what it’s worth, I’m not trying to argue or debate the concept of the Trinity. I just think it’s a clear example which effectively demonstrates the fallacy of the argument you’re presenting.
I’m from Kearny NJ, I graduated class of “81″. Kearny is a town of approx. 3 sq miles yet we have close to 15 church’s. Mr P as he’s been called lately belongs to one of the radical baptist church’s in town. Mr P proselytizing in class is fact no 2 ways about it. We have heard only one side to this unfolding saga as the Kearny BOE and the teacher have both been silent over this matter. I think what bothers most of us is the fact that the teacher lied when confronted over his comments and the BOE giving nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Had this been done by a Muslim or Jewish teacher I’ m certain that teacher would have been fired already.
[…] As a person who has not procreated, and who will never procreate (I refuse to bring another life into this fucked up place), I have no problem whatsoever paying for public education of other people’s children. However, if a teacher can be placed on administrative leave for something so remarkably trivial as doing a cheer routine (has anyone considered that she might have been trying to get kids to try out for cheer?!) yet scumbag history teachers can get away with proselytizing and verbally abusing children (”the Bible says Jews are going to Hell” / “the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin”) under the guise of protected First Amendment speech, then the public education system has some amazingly serious problems to contend with. […]