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.

    Of course, my suspicions are aroused when an anti-death-penalty group oppeses a firing at a school.

   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.

    He observed the National Day of Silence by not speaking.  At all!  How do you "teach" without speaking?

    “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.
    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.”

      In other words, they want to tell the students how they should think critically, and having to follow a curriculum is interfering with this.

       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.”

      Teachers, once again, not wanting any kind of standard to live up to.  THey want unlimitted reign over the classroom, to mold young minds to think like them, not to think for themselves.

       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.”

      Free speech from a teacher who can fail you for not agreeing with his or her ideals!!!

     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.”

       This is another example of teachers living in a fairy tale world.  I would like to see the example of "millions and millions of people who have been liberated peacefully.
        This story was followed up by many, many letters to the editor of the Journal Star.
       On May 15, 2007, the following letter probably summed up the issue in reality (I am surprised that the Journal Star printed it):
    
      East better without Baker

I am a student at Lincoln East and had Michael Baker as a teacher for one semester.

This one semester I had with him was one of the worst because of the intimidation he forced on the students who voiced their opinions about supporting Bush and the war. I supported the war and very much support it now, and whenever we would share news, I would share news about the war, the good news that he would never share, and he would criticize me and poke fun at my opinions.

It didn’t stop there, either. On one of my papers I had been working on with a classmate, he had downgraded me because of my opinion that there were weapons of mass destruction, and he told me to check my sources because there never were WMDs.  Now students will be able to learn without an agenda pushed on us.

Dan Cramer, Lincoln

 I never thought that I would say this, but Lincoln Public Schools finally got one right.

 And last but not least, if you look at Michael Baker's photo, it proves a picture is worth a thousand words: