Michael Baker, who made news last year when district officials told him he couldn’t teach history from the present backwards, has not been in classrooms since April 18.
Posted on 05/13/2007 12:22:30 PM PDT by stan_sipple
The abrupt retirement last week of a veteran high school history teacher created a firestorm online and stirred debate about academic freedom in today’s classrooms.
Nebraskans for Peace issued a statement calling the suddenness of East High teacher Michael Baker’s retirement “troubling,” especially in light of a peace studies course he started teaching this year.
The Academic Freedom Coalition of Nebraska discussed Baker’s departure Saturday.
David Moshman, the group’s policy coordinator, said the coalition doesn’t know all the facts but is concerned about the process and whether Baker, 58, was terminated because he was a troublemaker or for his teaching methods.
On April 18, his last day in the classroom, Baker showed his ninth-grade geography students a documentary film called “Baghdad ER.” Students have said Baker, who was the original sponsor for East’s Gay Straight Alliance, was participating in the group’s observance of a national day of silence.
The critically acclaimed documentary chronicles life in the emergency room of a combat support hospital in Baghdad and includes graphic footage of injured soldiers.
“Even if there was some issue of whether he should have showed the movie, he was treated as if he was a danger to his students,” Moshman said. “The abruptness of his departure, I would think it was very disruptive to his classes.”
Lincoln Public Schools officials won’t comment, citing personnel rules.
And Baker told The Progressive magazine he can’t speak freely because an agreement he reached with LPS prohibits him saying anything “disparaging” about the district. Baker declined comment for this story.
His supporters — and his critics — have been anything but silent.
More than 160 reader comments peppered JournalStar.com, and two Facebook sites created by students and former students in his support had a total of more than 600 members.
“He opened our minds,” said senior Sam Scott, who was taking Baker’s peace studies class this semester. “It wasn’t purely academic. We learned life lessons also, about being a good human being, being active in the community, telling us we can make a difference.”
Comments on JournalStar.com ran the gamut — from saying Baker encouraged students to look at issues from all sides to congratulating LPS for getting rid of a teacher who refused to entertain thoughts that differed from his own liberal and anti-war views.
A strain that ran through the comments hinted at a broader question: How much freedom do teachers have to discuss differing views and to teach students to think independently and critically about issues, especially controversial ones?
“In a time of real national crisis, we need young citizens who are willing to take a variety of perspectives and think very critically about the state of our state and nation,” said Paul Olson, a retired University of Nebraska-Lincoln English teacher and a member of Nebraskans for Peace.
Marilyn Moore, LPS associate superintendent for instruction, agreed, said teaching students to think critically is an important goal, and that includes discussing controversial issues.
District policy requires such discussion be age-appropriate: Discussing capital punishment with high school seniors is appropriate. Doing so with second-graders is not.
It also requires that both sides be presented over the course of a semester.
“The guidance of the policy is, if you’re teaching something that is, will be or will be perceived as a controversial issue, the content needs to be balanced,” Moore said.
Teachers often use supplemental materials, such as newspaper articles or videos.
Moore wouldn’t comment about “Baghdad ER” but noted there are policies regarding copyright laws, and, if a film is R-rated or contains material with similar characteristics — violence, language, nudity or sexual behavior — parents need to be notified. The made-for-TV documentary is rated for mature audiences. Nancy Biggs, LPS assistant superintendent for human resources, said Baker did not send home permission slips before showing “Baghdad ER” but wouldn’t comment on whether that violated policy.
Teachers also have to follow the curriculum, Moore said.
That’s an issue over which Baker has tangled with administrators in the past.
He used to teach history from the present backward, saying the method allowed students to be grounded in the issues they face today. Administrators told him he had to stop, and last year he lost an appeal of the decision.
District officials said they’d decided the best way to teach history was chronologically and that having one class taught differently would make it too difficult for students who might need to transfer in or out of the class. They also said it put students at a disadvantage for assessment tests based on a chronological curriculum. Nor was there empirical evidence Baker’s system worked.
Randy Ernst, a teacher working in the district office on a grant to allow history teachers to earn master’s degrees, said those state standards ensure all students are learning the same material.
“I think teaching is an art form,” he said. “I think part of the art of teaching clearly involves knowing the content you are to bring to the classroom, having a firm grasp on the curricular material purchased by the district to use in the classroom, but then also figuring out a way to make it relevant so your students care.”
Ernst noted that teachers at all levels — including Baker — have been involved in reviewing the assessments to decide whether they are analyzing what they should.
But Moshman said that focus on curriculum and standards can sap time needed to teach critical thinking.
“Helping students become critical thinkers is good for them and for democracy, but it’s hard to assess,” Moshman said. “If (teachers) spend too much time getting them to think for themselves, there’s not time to get to the stuff on the test.”
LPS officials disagree.
“We want students to be able to think with depth and sophisticated thinking skills about that which they have learned,” Moore said.
Ernst said that’s happening all over the district.
“We have great American history teachers in every building who teach the curriculum — and (teach students) to be thoughtful about what they’re learning and ask questions.”
Both Ernst and Moore acknowledge state standards do put some constraints on teachers, but said they’re necessary to level the playing field.
“The expectation that teachers teach curriculum, and the whole curriculum, is more consistent,” Moore said.
Some teachers who have felt particularly passionate about one area of study spent more time on that, overlooking other topics, Moore said.
One teacher spent 18 weeks on the Civil War, at the expense of other topics, she said. That wouldn’t happen now.
A teacher who wants to connect a novel to American history can do it but must be “pretty diligent” because it can’t be done at the expense of the industrial revolution, she said.
But Paul Olson said he has watched what he called a massive shift over the years, reinforced by the federal No Child Left Behind law, that pressures teachers into uniformity “and that has a chilling effect.”
“I’m passionate about teaching,” he said. “It just really ticks me off when so-called accountability gets in the way of learning. We spend our lives measuring whether we’ve done anything rather than doing anything.”
Moshman, who worked with Baker on his appeal of his history-teaching method, said he couldn’t’ understand why LPS wouldn’t let Baker use any method he wanted as long as kids were learning what they should be learning.
“It seemed like they were cracking down in an unusual way,” he said.
It seems that way now, too, he said.
What happened with Baker seem out of step for the district, he said.
“LPS has been a pretty good school system in terms of free speech,” he said. “It didn’t seem typical of LPS.”
Olson, who wrote the statement for Nebraskans for Peace, said Baker’s peace studies class is important and he hopes East High will continue it.
Olson, who co-founded a conflict resolution program at UNL, reviewed Baker’s materials for the course and said they offered a variety of perspectives, including those that said peace depends on military strength.
“I’m not advocating that people be taught only anti-war perspectives, but I think they should be fully included in the curriculum,” Olson said. “Millions and millions of people have been liberated through nonviolent means.”
What cost Baker his job wasn’t academic freedom, but the lack of it in his class. It was apparent that he was presenting a one sided and opinionated position rather than presenting both sides. I would also think that type of in depth discussion of issues may have been in appropriate for a 9th grade geography class give the general level of maturity one could expect at their age.
Look closely at his mug on line and he has posters of Che Guevara on his classroom wall
Wonder if he showed the movie, Silent Scream, about the brutality of abortion, would they be concerned about academic freedom?
That’s an issue over which Baker has tangled with administrators in the past.
OH, how unfair! I think all the teachers should quit in protest at this violation of their academic freedom!
Then parents could teach their own children geography using maps and atlases, rather than emergency-room films.
Or the spiked PBS special about Jihadism and dhimmitude
He used to teach history from the present backward, saying the method allowed students to be grounded in the issues they face today.
Utter BS, but he knows that fully well. He knows that by only presenting his leftist views of current events he won’t have enough time to teach actual history that might shed some light on just how wrong he is.
Ya, stan, here’s a pic of the teacher in this link:
http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2007/05/08/news/local/doc463ff8cadb767119770317.txt
The reporter in this article is just soooooo sympathetic to this aging hippy. Sad.
From GOOGLE:
“True learning comes about through the discovery of truth, not through the imposition of an official truth.” Noam Chomsky
Hi. My name is Michael Baker. I have been a teacher in Lincoln Public Schools for 24 years. Since 1989, I have been assigned to the Social Studies department at Lincoln East High School. The road that lead me to Lincoln was quite a journey.
I was raised in a military family. My father was a career naval officer and he was transferred just about every two years. The result of that was moving across country by car six times and once by plane. I learned at an early age to be flexible and adjust to change.
I graduated from Granby High School in Norfolk, Virginia in 1966, took advantage of the student deferment, and attended the University of South Carolina. During the spring semester of 1968 I attended the American College in Paris. I was there when the Tet Offensive started, Dr. King assassinated, and student riots took place. I returned to South Carolina for the fall semester, dropped out and eventually enlisted in the United States Army Security Agency for four years.
After basic training I went to Monterey, California and studied Vietnamese for 47 weeks. Just before I was to graduate, the Security Agency dropped me, I sued them for breach of contract and won, and got a year cut from my enlistment.
My next duty was Military Intelligence School at Ft.Holabird, Maryland where I was trained to interrogate prisoners of war. A few weeks before graduation, I participated in an anti-war demonstration in Washington, D.C. Not too long after that, I found myself in Vietnam.
Perhaps it was luck, but I never had to interrogate prisoners. I was assigned to be an English Language Instructor for Vietnamese military personnel and stationed in Saigon. I performed this duty for about six months and then became the company truck driver for the remainder of my tour of duty. I returned to the United States in 1972 and was honorably discharged from the Army.
I returned to the University of South Carolina and became a much better student. I graduated with a B.S in Government and International Relations in 1975. I was accepted into Graduate School but instead decided to take some time off. I spent the next two years sailing throughout the Caribbean.
I eventually ended up in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1978 and taught Kindergarten for one year teaching all Vietnamese children and one year working with Catholic Charities as a liasion between a Vietnamse daycare center and the Vietnamese community. While attending a conference in northern Virginia, I met a woman from Lincoln.
In the fall of 1980 I moved to Lincoln and in 1981 got married. I began teaching English as a Second Language at Lincoln High in 1981 and stayed there until 1988. I wrote curriculum for one year and then in 1989 moved to Lincoln East where I have been ever since. In 1994, I earned a Masters Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Michael Baker, who made news last year when district officials told him he couldn’t teach history from the present backwards, has not been in classrooms since April 18.
Nice picture of Che.
” teach history from the present backwards”
That would be interesting. I can see them teaching the occupation of France in WWII stemming from Paris’ harsh application of the draconian condition France imposed on Germany at Versailles, and the rise of Adoph Hitler being facilitated by the French hauling away of the German industrial base in the Ruhr Valley.
That would be some education!
Students in Baker’s fifth-period peace studies class were concerned enough that they staged a “sit-in” after the class until school administrators came to talk to them.
n 2005, district officials told Baker he couldn’t use his “yo-yo” approach to teaching history, which starts with the present and moves backward in 20- to 30-year chunks.
He’d been teaching history that way since 2001 and agreed to go back to the traditional method for a year, though he hoped to subsequently take a “thematic approach.” And he appeared before the Lincoln Board of Education to offer his views on the subject.
working taxpayer wrote on May 08, 2007 7:47 AM:"Baker's antics have been known for many years. His "retirement" is long overdue. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, because we are blessed to live in the USA. BUT, he is not entitled to stray from the LPS curriculum, and preach his political views to the students in the school building on school time. Glad to him gone..."
Craig wrote on May 08, 2007 9:15 AM:"Baker is an anti-American socialist who has been using his classes to attack capitalism and democracy. There are many students who were unhappy with him, but apparently the LJS author wasn't looking for those. An example of how completely dedicated to this movement is that he was showing a war movie in a GEOGRAPHY class. Without even discussing why a "Peace Class" would even be offered at a High School, this is a teacher who should have been fired a long time ago. This is a good day for Lincoln."
Ben wrote on May 08, 2007 9:46 AM:"Please .... I'm glad to see this guy go. I couldn't stand him when I had him before all this war dramma has be hyped up and I probably couldn't control my gag reflexs now if I had to sit through 50 minutes of this guy again."
Chip wrote on May 08, 2007 10:53 AM:"If Baker showed a graphic abortion video and was a pro-lifer, I suspect he would have suffered the same fate. Perhaps, however, he would have been fired years ago. I have no problem with teachers who teach both sides of controversial issues and encourage students to draw conclusions based on empirical evidence. Baker has demonstrated for years, though, that he is one-sided. He has taught a leftist, socialist agenda as absolute truth. Now, I ask you, is that education or indoctrination?"
ALW wrote on May 08, 2007 11:07 AM:"ABOUT TIME! I had this guy for a week in the 90s and it was LONG enough. He is as anti-American as you can get. His class was a guaranteed A because you did nothing except listen to CDs and Baker's ranting and raving about how terrible the USA is. I switched to another class as did several others who actually wanted to learn American History. There was no peace studies class then either, but why am I not surprised he's teaching it. I use the term "teaching" loosely. EHS has really had some good ones over the years...yeah right."
Drewman wrote on May 08, 2007 11:16 AM:"I see in the photo that Mr. Baker has a problem dressing professionally.If he wants us/LPS to take him seriously, then present yourself as such. I've seen enough of these "I'm trying to change the world by being a provocative role model/teacher types"--they're so full of themselves and their "mission", that they become semi-paranoid about any criticism. I also see a photo of Che Guevarra on his bulletin board--the murderous mascot of all failed revolutionaries. "Peace studies"! This guy is a joke. If he was such a good teacher, how would his students know of his opinions? I somehow doubt that "peace studies" include "peace through military strength" modules. "Thematic" approach? Yeah sure--THEMES that Mr. Baker thinks are important! I'm sure Mr. Baker with find a job with Nebraskans for Peace, or some such group. We need TEACHERS--not indoctrination disguised as education. I've been in education throughtoutthe past 20+years--I've seen scores of Mr. Baker-on-a-mission-types,and our kids cannot afford to waste their high school years with teachers like Mr. Baker. Bye."
I have seen “Baghdad ER” and would say it is not appropriate material for a 9th grade class, maybe borderline for upper class man, if taught with balance. Definitely, you would need parental permission.
My guess this is the last straw for this teacher considering it was shown in a "geography" class.
Peace Studies? They need to spend more time on reading, writing, and arithmetic.
What and spoil their splendid young minds with skills and knowledge to make their own fact based decisions on the great issues of our day!
It is much easier to indoctrinate them rather then teach them
Now there's an angry, hard right, ultra-conservative rag.
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