Interview with Nico Baakman on the occasion of his retirement
After over forty year of teaching, of which 20 years at Maastricht University, Dr. Nico Baakman retired on 14 January 2020. On this occasion and as a goodbye to his students and colleagues, his former student Hannah Segers talked to him about his career as a professor and his experiences along the way.
You told me that you were not retiring because you wanted to, but because you were forced to by the state, as I understood.
Yes, it’s the law. We have the CLO – Collective Labour Agreement – which is negotiated between the employers – in this case the universities – and the unions. You’re bound by it, and they agreed that if someone is entitled to their state pension, they have to leave and make room for a younger person. There has been a debate about at what age you should retire and they made it half a year earlier. Otherwise I would have been leaving in May, but they decided to move my retirement age to January.
So you would like to continue if you could?
It was not my idea to quit, no. But well, it is what it is. The point is, as I think I told you in class, I can go on doing what I like to do; reading, thinking, writing, but I can’t go on giving class. That is now cut off and that’s too bad.
What did you first expect when you started teaching? What hopes did you have? What fears?
I had the wrong hopes, I suppose. I had the stupid idea that you can make people learn things – but you can’t, forget the whole idea. You can stimulate, you can motivate, you can show people where interesting stuff is, you can answer questions, but they have to learn. And you have to leave it at that. If they don’t want to, that’s too bad, but it’s their life, their choice, let it go. And that’s hard to do.
N. Baakman
Was there something that surprised you positively? That you wouldn’t have expected before?
Yes, that you learn so much yourself. I have learned a lot from my own teaching. The point is – and I think that’s advice that you should bear in mind – If you have to talk about a theory, a book, an article and explain it, only then you find out whether you understand it or not. In explaining, you discover if you got it yourself, where the weak points are and what’s not clear to yourself. So if you study for an exam, imagine someone and tell him or her about it. If you can, you’re okay, if you can’t, study more! That’s why I learned so much from my own teaching. And of course from sharing my doubts and questions with students. I’ve always done this, I said “Well, I know it says this, but I think this. And what do you think?”
You told me earlier that you travelled through Europe quite a bit. What did you learn from that time?
How interesting differences in culture are. When you would go to France in those days, no one there would speak English. In Alsace-Lorraine they might understand some German. If you didn’t speak French properly, of course they would be polite, but they also would wonder whether you were really civilized, because they had learned for ages that French is the high peak of civilization, so you can’t blame the people. When you go to Italy and you speak three words Italian, they’ll take you in and you’re part of the family. They’re warm people and eating together is quite important. If a Frenchmen invites you to his home for dinner, that’s very special. I was in Turkey with a car once, and the car broke down again and again and I got so much help from people. Turkish people are very hospitable: even if you are a stranger, they will help you. That would never happen in the Netherlands, not then, not now.
What is your favourite place that you travelled to?
There are three cities in particular that I liked. There is Barcelona, which is now overrun with tourists, Prague, same story, and Rome. I was in Prague when it was still under communist rule. Same for East-Berlin, by the way, I’ve been there too. That was depressing, really. People were clearly afraid to contact you. Socializing was dangerous for them; they wouldn’t, not because of you, but because of the others. So many East Germans were ‘Spitzel’, they were spying on their fellow citizens and you could feel that. Something shocking I experienced in Prague was when we were having a beer in the afternoon and we started talking to someone, a man in his fifties, and it turned out that he knew about philosophy and a lot about Hegel. He was happy to find out that I knew something about Hegel, too. It turned out he had been a supporter of the Prague Spring movement, had been kicked out by the socialist intervention, and had lost his job as a professor. They had given him a job at the library, where he was terribly unhappy of course. So he was getting drunk every day. […] He knew a lot more about Hegel than I did and he really impressed me. It was such a waste of talent, such a waste of life, just because he had the wrong political ideas.
How did you end up at Maastricht University?
I was working at the Dutch Open University, I had been there almost 14 years and there I made my career. In the end, I spent my days fighting bureaucratic struggles. There was hardly time left for doing research or giving class. Then I accepted a job at the law faculty here. It paid a lot less but it gave me so much more pleasure. That was in 2000 and I worked there for four or five years and then I came to FASoS.
So you’ve been here for quite some time.
Yeah, it’s unbelievable. I gave my first class in 1979, that’s forty years of teaching.
What’s the favourite course you taught?
I’ve taught a number of courses, quite a few in fact. But I always liked ‘Idea of Europe’ a lot, partly because it was the first course for students. That’s another nice thing about teaching: You see students coming in and they are young, very young sometimes, in some cases still almost kids. But when they leave the faculty, you see confident young adults, who know who they are and what they want. That’s great to witness. In ‘Idea of Europe’ they’re all new and most are insecure and curious (laughs). And I think that’s where I am at my best, because they have got to get the feeling that they’re in a safe surrounding, that they can go wrong and make mistakes and that nothing will happen to them. And I try to make sure that that’s the way it is. The content of the course is, I think, one of the better one’s we have.
Do you think you learned something from your students as well?
Yeah, sure. On many occasions. By asking clever questions, by showing me that there was another side to it.
Do you have any regrets about your career?
None at all. And by the way, you shouldn’t have regrets. What has been, has been – it’s unchangeable - and what will come, we’ll see. What matters is now. That doesn’t mean I haven’t made mistakes, I have – many. But they were necessary to teach me a lesson or to get over something or realize something. Most likely, if I would do it again, I would make the same mistakes.
So you are happy about how everything turned out?
Oh yes! You may not know this, but three years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer and the prospects were not that good to say the least. So then I had to think about ‘Ok, what if I die?’ That was a possibility and I thought to myself: ‘I had the chance to learn a lot, I have two beautiful daughters, I have a great wife, I never had any shortage in my life – there was always enough to eat, I had shelter, […], I have seen quite a bit of the world, should I complain? No, not me – Shut up, be happy.’ Life has been good to me.
May I just ask: Have you fully recovered?
I have a test this month and it’s not looking bad, but not great either. We’ll see.
You won the FASoS Education Award three times. What did that mean to you?
A lot. An awful lot. Because it means that you are appreciated. I mean it’s the outcome of an election and you don’t know exactly what motivates people to vote for you, but on the whole I felt honoured and pleased, not because of the prize, but because it came from students. Which meant that in their view I had made a change. […] That meant a lot to me.
Talking about appreciation, was there a moment that you can remember, that made you really proud as a teacher?
They are usually in small details. I mean you may have noticed, I look around - I look at my students. That is not by accident. I do that because I want them to know they are being noticed and to see – and I quite often do – if there is this ‘click’ in their eyes. When you explain something and you can see that people got it, that is a moment of reward. The most appreciation I got is from students and colleagues on the same level and also from the support staff. The higher in the hierarchy, in general the less the appreciation was, with the clear exception of our present dean. Her I appreciate a lot.
What do you think makes a good teacher?
Well the most important thing is that you really, honestly, are interested in the learning process of your students. So if you care about that and if they believe you do, they will forgive your mistakes. You can learn many tricks: how to use the whiteboard, that you should never turn your back to the group, how you should come in, etcetera, but all that is secondary. What really matters is getting the message across: ‘I care about you and your learning process.’ If you get that message across, you can make a mistake and they will forgive you. You should realize that teaching is a social process, it’s not a technique, it’s not a bureaucratic procedure, it’s a social process.
What are you going to miss most about teaching?
As I told you, these little rewards; students who got it.
I have one final question: If any of your former students want to reach out to you, is there a way they can do that?
Of course. I am not into social media, but I do have a LinkedIn account, created for my students. If they want to, they can stay in touch via LinkedIn. I can no longer write official recommendation letters, but if you were once my student you will remain my student as long as you want to.
Any final advice?
I think I said it in class, but I will say it again. Whatever I told you, you will probably forget –and that is okay - but you need to remember one thing: Think for yourself. Keep on doing that. Be intellectually independent, don’t just believe others. Observe, open your eyes, think about what you have seen. And think for yourself. That’s the most important thing I can tell you.
Hannah Segers, FASoS student
17 January 2020