Losing Context

THE POST REPORTED last Wednesday that another teacher had been yanked out of another classroom for inappropriate behavior. Was she molesting students? Biting them on the nose? Seems that Marie Baker, a history teacher at Thomas Edison HS in Queens, was ousted for…teaching history.

During a lecture about America's Reconstruction following the Civil War, Ms. Baker (who is white) joked to her mostly black students, "about spending Halloween 'wearing a hood, carrying a lighter and cross and yelling [the n-word],'" (Brackets courtesy of the Post.)

Shocked and offended students reported her comments to school officials, and she was promptly removed from the classroom.

We're never provided, of course, with the full context of her comments. Neither, we can only assume, were school officials. Was she saying that she used to spend her Halloweens burning crosses? Or that she thinks it's what people should do? Or was she perhaps describing what the Klan was up to during that period of American history? Who cares?

All that matters is that the Klan was discussed and a forbidden word was spoken—thus making Ms. Baker's lecture violently racist in nature.

We pity the literature teachers working through Richard Wright. We also pity these children raised without a capacity for critical thought.