Math Teacher Given Green Light to Proselytize His Christian Faith

Maybe his math students should ask him,
“If one plus one plus one equals three, then how does One son plus One Father plus One spirit equal ONE God!?!”

I actually think the teacher should’ve won the case–though it should be unconstitutional. It is unconstitutional that the government endorses those slogans–on our money, in our pledge, in our national anthem and one of our most famous patriotic songs, and in the declaration–but once the government has endorsed them (as it does by placing them where it has) I think it is constitutional for them to be displayed in a public building.

It seems very easy to classify this as patriotism.

WTF? POWAY? I’m not too far from there, it doesn’t strike me as as town that would condone this. I guess it can happen anywhere…..

This has to be stopped, I hope the FRFF will get it overturned. The teachers speech is is not a personal when teaching in a PUBLIC school. Isn’t this why they are held to such insane standards of behavior??? Does this mean Hemant can now fly giant atheist banners in HIS classroom? Can you imagine the outrage if this happened????

Maybe a school kid should do just that. Like the nativity, it only gets taken down after they realize that others will get to share too!

Benitez said the district allows other teachers to post things on a variety or religious and nonreligious topics without penalty.

That sentence is the key to the ruling. By allowing other religious messages to be posted by other teachers they have made it so that telling only this one person that he can’t do so is unconstitutional.

A quick and easy fix is available: ban all personal religious messages by everyone. That will make it okay for them to tell him to remove them because then they are not being discriminatory. Or, if banning them all is undesirable, institute a good taste policy and limit the physical size of personal displays.

OMFG!!! Unbelievable!

I hope the school district appeals the hell out of this. Such a ghastly decision cannot be allowed to stand.

If the school allowed other messages then it might have been discriminatory to single out this guy.

Let’s see:
“In God We Trust” – on the official currency of the US.

“One Nation Under God” – taken from the official Pledge of Allegiance (as it is currently)

“God Bless America” and “God Shed His Grace On thee” – I think these should have been taken down. Nevertheless, while not “official” in any way, they’re lyrics to 2 traditional patriotic songs and are practically second national anthems. I’m not patriotic, but this is what countries do: they have flags, special national hymns, mottos, and other silly stuff.
I don’t expect an American court to fault a guy for being too enthusiastic an American.

How upsetting!! Mathematics, at that!

WTF does his banners have to do with math? I’m sure he will try to provide some correlation just to justify them, but his real intentions are obvious. Look how he has stressed “CREATOR” in all uppercase in a huge font. Plus standing alone, they make no mention of anything related to math. As much as I would like some atheists or secularists in the school to post some Flying Spaghetti Monster Propaganda in their class just prove how ridiculous allowing this is, I am reluctant to suggest it since it would be at the expense of the children’s education. This is really crazy though, and something should be done. Hopefully some children will complain or refuse his class for a different math teacher that can keep it neutral. He is so dirty to take advantage of his role in this way.

The guy has obviously been very shrewd in doing this. He’s been careful to only use slogans that are pretty much sanctioned by the government, or are at least “official” in the mind of the public. That, as evidenced by the verdict, seems to have given him quite a bit of wiggle room.

Confused. I would think the banners are a violation of the *children’s* first amendment rights. It’s a public school.

That sentence is the key to the ruling. By allowing other religious messages to be posted by other teachers they have made it so that telling only this one person that he can’t do so is unconstitutional.

Without reading the judge’s opinion, I have to agree on this point. If signs in general are permitted, but this teacher’s signs are prohibited, then it is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

I play softball in Poway.

Just saying.

The concepts of “fair” and equal treatment” are darlings of the radical religious right, especially in the arena of science education. “Teach the controversy” appeals to the inherent instinct we (or many of us) Americans seem to have for equality or fairness. In essence the judge ruled, if we apply the law in an idiotic fashion in one situation, we must be equally idiotic in others. After all, it’s only “fair”.

None of these are quotes from the bible, that may be why it is being allowed. But if it is history that is okay to string across a classroom, how about some good old Paine, Franklin, or Jefferson… maybe strung across the field by a physical education teacher.

The school should just make a rule that each teacher gets a little area (perhaps 2 square feet) of personal expression in the classroom. They can then put anything they want in it that isn’t outright offensive. (I know, what defines offensive). Then at least they can continue their tradition of personal expression without filling the classrooms with huge banners of potentially distracting propaganda. I’m sure Johnson will complain that his large banners are being discriminated against, but if the policy is applied uniformly to all teachers, even Benitez would find it hard press to come to his aide.

Since Johnson was awarded $90 plus reasonable attorney fees, (and if his attorney fees were already paid for by Christian watch groups) then he would have plenty of money to buy some nice new size appropriate expression plaques which he could swap out as the mood suits him.

Or even better, just tell the teachers to keep their religious/political viewpoints private and decorate the classroom with subject-appropriate material.

Mouse wrote:

I want to know what those other religious and political postings were. Are these other teachers’ personal beliefs or are they tied to courses? For example, are we talking about the Latin teacher posting a chart of the Roman gods and a world history teacher with posters on the religions they encounter in their studies OR are they truly personal expressions of belief unconnected to anything else?

Yeah, I’d like to see them too……as Criss expressed:

If other teachers are allowed “to post things on a variety or religious and nonreligious topics without penalty,” then could I post “Save ROE” posters in my classroom? “MY body, MY choice”?

The can of worms was already open before these posters were ordered down.

It looks to me like the judge was right. Other posters displayed by various teachers, described and uncontested in the judgement, were sufficiently varied that to discriminate against this one teacher’s posters would indeed be unfair.

And yes, Johnson’s posters are cautiously couched as phrases taken from historic and patriotic sources – although the “all men are created equal; they are endowed by their creator” might more aptly be said to have been carved from its source, fragmentary as it is. So it would be hard indeed, under the law and the practice of the school, to maintain that this is a clear breach of establishment.

Ben Isgur: It seems very easy to classify this as patriotism.

I say we ban patriotism in the classroom too.

Jose Diaz-Marin: No surprise here… Judge Roger Benitez was one of those George Bush’s nominated Judges:

Yeah, just like John E. Jones III. It’d be convenient if there were some black-and-white way or telling which judges were good or bad based on the party of the president that appointed them, but there isn’t. Take the Supreme Court: despite being appointed by members of both parties, eight of nine justices are conservatives, and the one moderate/liberal on the court (Anthony Kennedy) was appointed by Reagan, one of the worst presidents the U.S. had ever had, prior to those elected after 1999.

Victor: But, the two wrongs making a right decisions are ridiculous. The other teachers just need to take down their posters, as well.

How the word “peace” written in several languages by one teacher allows this teacher to proselytize his god is beyond me.

Instituting a policy in which all teachers take down posters unrelated to class material would be one solution. But the court is correct that picking on one person, however moronic his views, is not a good policy. It’s probably not best to call this “two wrongs make a right,” since we live in a society with diverse enough viewpoints that we can’t all agree on what messages are right or wrong. A better phrase would be “rule of law” or “Jeffersonian equality” (that is, “equality of authority”). Just as the government should not be allowed to permit heterosexual marriage but deny homosexual marriage or forbid discrimination against a certain list of groups but allow discrimination against others, it shouldn’t be allowed to censor some messages while allowing other messages of the same general character. Personally, I’d prefer that the government get entirely out of the marriage, discrimination, and censorship issues, but I still feel that the worst possible outcome is one in which the government (or the school administration) interferes in these areas selectively.

GreyTheory: Unfortunately this would also require removing the “Imagine” poster and make classrooms a sterile place even more suited for creating brainless drones.

Not quite. It would just limit teachers to putting up material relevant to their class. Johnson is free to keep up the posters on calculus. An art teacher is free to put up some prints. An English teacher is free to put in a bust of Shakespeare. A French teacher can put up a poster of the Eiffel Tower.

Oi. I’m reading through the ruling now. Some interesting facts, not mentioned by Hemant:
Page 6:

In fact, over the years Johnson has taught in the Poway Unified School District, Johnson received no complaints about the banners from the many individuals who have been inside his classroom including: seven different principals, numerous school board members, superintendents, and assistant superintendents, over 4,000 students and several thousand parents of students.

In other words, because nobody else complained, it’s acceptable.

Page 6-7

[Assistant Superintendant] Chiment testified that none of the individual phrases on the banners would be a problem, rather it was the combined influence that “over-emphasized” God. Chiment also testified that the problem was that the phrases were taken out of their original contexts. Chiment directed that a full copy of the Declaration of Independence and pictures of U.S. coins be delivered to Johnson so that Johnson could place them on the wall instead of his banners. Johnson declined. Johnson offered to post for display the full texts from which each of the banner phrases came, around the banners. Chiment disapproved.

“Fix your quote mines, please, by showing them in context. We’ll even pay for them.” “Not if I have to remove the mined gems.”
Page 8

That God places prominently in our Nation’s history does not create an Establishment Clause violation requiring curettage and disinfectant for Johnson’s public high school classroom walls. It is a matter of historical fact that our institutions and government actors have in past and present times given place to a supreme God.

This Judge sounds like a graduate of David Barton’s schooling.
Page 16

One banner contains an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence, this Nation’s most cherished symbol of liberty, observing: “All men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator” with unalienable rights.

Except by removing those last three words from the sentence, he has completely changed the meaning. Trying that with his own words on Page 21 gives “But not all speech by a government employee is government speech. A government employee may be engaged in his or her own private speech while on government property.”

In any case, it’s because of jerks like Mr. Johnson why schools have to crack down on every possibly contentious statement or poster. They’ll use the existence of the smaller expressions of individuality to excuse their giant proselytization efforts.

(If nothing else, his ‘historical context’ excuses would garner a lot more sympathy if he taught history, not math. If you want history in the math classroom, do Pythagoras, Euler, or Babbage, not religious/pseudopatriotic claptrap like this.)

I have to agree with the judge here for reasons already mentioned by others above.

Should the FFRF should turn their eyes to the school and not the teacher?

Should the policies on religious expression be changed so they are more tolerant of religious views held by students, but that might not be reflected in those of the teaching staff?

It seems that without giving students some wall space for such banners, they’re bordering on discriminating against students? (Ok, that’s maybe a bit of a stretch)

I agree that the banners are pretty ridiculous and their size and locations are somewhat intimidating. However, I would like to point out that in high school, the students (or their parents, if they want) can schedule their courses so they take math with a different teacher if the signs are too distracting or offensive. I foresee that future cases under different contexts will likely to be more difficult for students to resolve.

Just add this case to yet another in the history of religious free speech in this district. Check out this case from 2007…

http://www.10news.com/news/10844949/detail.html

(Jan 2007) SAN DIEGO — A federal judge has ruled in favor of Poway school officials in the case of siblings who claimed their constitutional rights were violated when one of them was pulled from class for wearing a T-shirt deriding homosexuality as “shameful” …

Maybe religious expression is only protected when it isn’t paraphrased? After all, calling homosexuality shameful seems easy enough to justify as a religiouis belief: Leviticus 18:22 seems pretty clear: “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.” Plenty more justification elsewhere in the bible.

The appeal fell through in this case…

The appeals court ruling, which applied to all courts in California and most of the western United States, had upheld a U.S. District Court judge’s decision that allowed schools to stop students from wearing statements thought to demean or infringe on the rights of others.

That’s all a bit over the top.

In my high school, the Youth for Christ club made a bunch of construction paper hearts with Bible verses about how much God loves you on them for Valentine’s Day, and they wanted to hang them in the hallway but the principal refused permission. After that, at least one teacher (there may have been more) allowed them to hang the hearts in his classroom. Because of this incident, I assumed that teachers’ classrooms were considered semi-private.

Oh, that one teacher was a math teacher too. What’s with that?

It sounds like the district court made the correct decision in this case since the school really did single out this teacher specifically over because his religious message was deemed unacceptable while the religious messages of other teachers were accepted. The school may now revise their policy to more carefully define what is and isn’t allowed, although thanks to the “patriotic” flavor of his banners, I expect it will be difficult to craft a policy that bans them unless that policy is extremely restrictive, such as a blanket ban on anything or a ban that allows only course related materials. Neither of those options sound appealing.

I mentioned this story to my wife and she was of the opinion that leaving the current policy in place might be the best thing, since at least in the current situation students are being exposed to a wide variety of opinions, and thus they are being challenged to think about things that they may not otherwise be exposed to. The court ruling mentioned a teacher with quotes from Gandhi, for example, and I’m sure that any students from fundamentalist Christian families have probably not been exposed to his ideas before.

The benefits of free speech often come with the price that you have to put up with some speech that isn’t itself very beneficial.

It is scary that in this day and age that religion is still a point to be argued. The lack of common sense in this country is becoming increasingly scary. It is a sad day when most of the countries of the world look at us as a bunch of bible thumpin zealots. We use to be the country that others looked up to, now we are becoming a joke or a force to be feared.

Are all men really equal ? Some are better endowed than others…

@Christophe, that’s the first thing that entered my mind when I saw that banner. Dirty minds must think alike. My next thought was, ‘wait, considering that this phrase usually only is applied to male genitals, are those that aren’t ‘endowed’ inferior?’

If anyone had bothered to read the ruling you would have seen that it was based on the school district allowing all sorts of non-Christian religious postering by teachers, anti religious postering and advocacy for such causes as gay rights.
So the ruling was: you have created/ allowed a limited free speech forum for teachers to express their personal beliefs. You can eliminate all the posters or you can leave all the posters. You can’t decide to draw the line at Deist (not even Christian)posters that reflect the Declaration of Independence and the views of the founders.
Which part of this don’t you get? If the science teacher can use her classroom to advocate gay rights, why can’t the math teacher use his to to advocate deism?

Are you people kidding me? Read the brief of the case and the court’s ruling. How can anyone here say this is unfair? Only a complete and utter moron would think this is not a FAIR and JUST ruling. Other teachers are hanging other religious slogans and statements of belief in their classrooms and this guy is singled out because his are Judeo-Christian? And somehow any of you think this is a GOOD idea?

Let me illustrate in a way many of you may be able to understand… What would happen if teachers started hanging political slogans and endorsements in their classrooms and the school board banned endorsements of same-sex marriage? Should that be fair? Or would you be outraged by the school “targeting” specific messages that you feel strongly about?

How is this any different? How can any governing body publicly ban one religion and not another?

You name yourself the “friendly” atheist but your site is not really that friendly.

If you despise the fundamental precepts of America, why did you come here?

And why do they latch onto the part where it mentions a Creator, but not embrace the “all men are created equal” part when it comes to LGBT rights?