So their teachers' uniop just rolled over and died on this? What the hell does he pay dues for? And where's the ACLU?

Another nail in the coffin of US public education, the goal of which I always thought was to teach how to think more than what to think.

Mr. Baker, may good fortune be your destiny--you've earned it.

manchild,

Re: Another nail in the coffin of US public education, the goal of which I always thought was to teach how to think more than what to think.

You can't be serious. Citizenship training is listed as one of the primary goals of almost every school system in the country, often as the very first one. And by "citizenship", we don't mean students with critical thinking ability, but students with the right attitudes and viewpoints.

Neo-cons aren't born. They're made.

Mr. Baker and his ideas frighten people who are afraid of change and prefer robots to thinkers. Most school boards wouldn't allow this to happen but obviously in Lincoln there are a lot of terrified people.
Hoa Binh

Reminds me of Nazi Germany. I'm beginning to believe we are worse than the ill-informed German people of that era. We should know better. Ignorance disguised as patriotism will have its price, we shall inherit the wind.

I'm heartened to hear kroenung58's first reply, along the lines of "Call the Union!". Unfortunately for teachers in Nebraska, that would be a long distance call. *Very* long distance.

What makes one kid intelligent and kind and another proud of his stupidity and malicious?
Which would you rather be around? Which is the better citizen? Which makes a better soldier?

Believe it or not many people influence children to be loud, ignorant, and mean, and resent anybody who does not do likewise.

Dear Michael Baker, welcome to the club of ... fired teachers, those who thought that the purpose of education is to open up bigoted, closed, stupid minds.

American public education is a complete failure. And nothing, nothing whatsoever, will be done and can be done.

Which is as it should be: the business of America is business, war, profit, Crosstianity--not education.

Kind of explains why American high school students are among the least educated and most stupid in modern industrialized countries. The Reps aren't leaving a child behind, they're leaving a whole damned generation behind.

"Tell people something they know already and they will thank you for it. Tell them something new and they will hate you for it."- Monbiot.com

Well I just went on Netflix to rent the DVD! thanks dlz

I thought that academic freedom was a big buzzword on the American Right thanks to David Horowitz but I guess its only freedom if you're further right than Genghis Khan. The system is obviously rigged to smash independent thinking- who said we had to agree with something to learn about it? Debate is good for the mind. I'd rather argue it out with the opposing side than roll over and accept.

As I posted somewhere else today (as did another enlightened soul): read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by professor Lewin. its a disturbing read that outlines the hijacking of the U.S. textbook industry by the religious right, think it's improbable? - give it a read

Another example of one of the primary reasons that my wife and I homeschool our 4 children.

Public schools in America are *designed* to produce ignorant, incurious, fearful, compliant consumers. Legislation like NCLB isn't a policy failure, it's successful execution of longstanding education policy.

The only reason that I can come up with for why more Americans don't realize the true nature and purpose of public schooling is that, well, they were public schooled.

And, no, recognizing and resisting the sinister nature of public schooling in no way disparages the teachers like Baker who do the best they can to undermine the system and actually provide their students with an education.

You see the results of that sort of behavior...and why most teachers shy away from it.

This is just another example of 19th century academics still alive and well in the 21st century.

Articles like this continue to prove that closed minds are in the majority and fear reigns supreme in our so called modern culture.

It's a shame that parents do not understand that the more notable members of our society were the ones that decided to approach things from a different direction.

Conformity breeds mediocrity, repetition and repression.

Is this perhaps the kind of "freedom," and "democracy" that America so kindly wants to export to anyone that dares not (gasp!) be like America?

I suppose it would be safe to assume that George W. Bush was never taught by a teacher like Mr. Baker? I mean, how else would you explain his brilliance?

Thank God I am Canadian -- and I teach in private school!

Why is it so hard for so many to understand the Bush-cult credo at this point: just shut up and do what you're told, whether you're a teacher or Iraq.

Or we will Soprano your ass...

Correct, where is his union? The marines don't leave any behind. No teacher left behind. I guess in this case, just left on his behind. What next, bumper sticker police? Join in, embed, follow the RNC script or pay the price. Nothing new, the school district just following orders from the RNC.

Frederick Gates, director of the Rockefeller Foundation wrote in 1913: "In our dream, we have limitless resources, and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hand. The present educational conventions fade from our minds; and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search to embryo great artists, painters, or musicians. Nor will we cherish even the humbler ambition to raise up from the lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we now have ample supply."

We need hardworking laborers and workers who will dream the American Dream and foolishly believe that it is all they need. Like George Carling said, "To dream the American Dream, one needs to be asleep!"

I noticed that in my own high school, in my kids' high school, and in some of the other schools I've read about that it's the scum that rises, not the cream. This would explain the actions of the school administration against a teacher who was quite happy to go on doing a good job at educating kids. It would be interesting to have a psychological analysis of the administrators involved to see if they do what they do from fear of the community, jealousy of someone who is better than they were (which is why they left teaching to become administrators), inability to think and reason logically, or what. What a bunch of losers!

Public education exists to indoctrinate our children to be "good" Americans. I remember the propaganda prevalent when I was school-age (50s and 60s) that warned of the mind control being perpetrated on the poor Soviet children. Sounds an awful lot like what passes for education these days in the USA.

By showing the film he showed kids the effect of a cause. That is vital to education. However we aren't educating our kids to think but to consume and sheep bleat along with the propoganda.

Over the years, our entire nation has been steadily manipulated by FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real. And all fear is based in ignorance.

Michael Baker was fired out of fear.

The school administrators and the Lincoln Board of Education feared a possible lawsuit. Had a disgruntled (translation: moron) parent filed a lawsuit and possibly won, others might follow. "How dare they show my kids that stuff and teach them to think!"

The Lincoln school district feared the potential public backlash that a lawsuit might have generated had Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and other twits of that ilk possibly picked up the story and vilified them with whatever pugnacious BS they could think of.

Nebraska is a right-to-work state. IF there is a teacher's union, it has little-to-no clout and didn't back Baker for fear of probable legal reprisals.

None of his immediate co-workers risked coming to his defense for fear that they'd likely be next in the unemployment line.

So there we have it; fear mongers have permeated all aspects of governance from the Oval Office right down to the local school districts.

How can we stop this? How can we turn this around? I'm not asking with a submissive sense of hopelessness. What are some real ideas that can be turned into tangible action?

Education is one of the biggest concern of the US public.
Are we so naive and ignorant as to believe that such large voting block would go unnoticed by our politicians for ever?

The current education syetem we are still using is the same linear system used by the Greeks from the hellenic past. From A to Z no deviations.
Conformity not change is at the heart of this system.

Well, I attended one of the top teacher education programs in the country, at the University of Wisconsin. We were taught to be experimental, push the boundaries, use our creativity, devise lesson plans that plumbed the depths of knowledge and experience. Then I took a job and realized quickly that administrators--principals, superintendents and their ilk--were the most conservative bunch of prigs around. They were taught to be ultra-careful in their duties. When my cutting-edge science curriculum confused my principal who could not comprehend why I would give the students an experience of acceleration before I gave them the vocabulary word, he decided I needed to go. He had NO TRAINING in teaching science but he had authority. And, yes, I had a weak union that did little to slow my exit from that conservative school district.

On a positive note, I'm so pleased to have escaped that privileged White hell.

American culture is based on AUTHORITY. A radical act is to disregard that authority.

"It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind"
James A. Baldwin

To DaveG955:

For some years to come, the Internet can be effectively used to get non-conforming ideas into the minds of people. It's hard right now to control the Internet.

Most people who think a lot are also pretty well "wired", and have access. CommonDreams is evidence that if you collect great content into one area, people will come.

The area that is largely "unexplored" in the Internet idea-space is how to convert great philosophy into great actions. Philosophers tend to think and talk too much, and everyone else is doing too much and thinking too little.

Many young people want to change the world; they just don't know how, or why. That's what the Peace Corps was all about. If you could make a modern Internet-based Peace Corps that was part PAC, part Policy Argument, part Meet Market, and part Recreation venue (outdoors recreation, mostly) and aim it at twenty-somethings, you'd have a great start. If you added a Science and Tech unit whose job was to enlist the newly graduated talent of U.S. schools to devise and implement carbon-neutral technology, that'd be even better.

Another great extant model of ideas-to-action is the Open Source movement in the InfoTech industry. It very effectively organizes a number of far-flung, temperamentally dissimilar people into a coherent, effective unit, and does it without much in the way of bureaucratic bungling. It's remarkable.

Please do continue asking about how to get great ideas into the minds of action-oriented people. That is exactly what we must do.

And we wonder why so many kids drop out of school. Anytime they're presented with intellectual challenge, it gets stifled.

The Heartland has its head up its butt.

"Baker is an anti-American socialist who has been using his classes to attack capitalism and democracy,"

Yeah, subjecting and thusly sensitizing young people to the horrors of violence and war is un-American. How foolish.

People in Nebraska need socialism. Capitalism has done nothing to help the farmers in that region. Is it any wonder why so many young folks in that sector the country are enlisting to die in foreign lands? They feel as if they have nothing else to do post-high school?

I wonder if the military recruiters had something to do with this teacher's firing? After all, where do the recruiters find most of their applicants? I'm sure letting the kids watch "Baghdad ER" soured many of them on the idea of mounting up.

OuterBeltway,

Thanks for the reply and I like the way you framed it using the Peace Corps and Open Source as ideas-to-action examples.

You mentioned, "Many young people want to change the world; they just don't know how or why." I agree but I also believe that once they understand the "why," the "how" will take care of itself.

The American establishment is sick. When teachers speak truthfully about American history and our top misleaders they get in big trouble. The American establishment depends heavily upon lies & deception.

In Texas schools - the poor kids are supposed to recite the pledge of allegience to the flag of the U.S. - every damn day, and to add insult to injury - they have to say another pledge right after that, to the damned Texas flag!