Last week, Webster School in Saint Paul voted to change its name to “Barack and Michelle Obama Service Learning Elementary School”.
Do I roll my eyes and shake my head when my local school district subscribes to a personality cult for a president that’s been in office just a skosh over three months? Of course. Indeed, it strikes me as the kind of second-hand hubris (I don’t know a better term for “participating in others’ hubris”) that I can see people looking back on in, say, five years, shaking their heads, and saying “well, maybe we were a bit rash…”
But the real problem is Ain this thread, on E-”Democracy’s” Saint Paul forum. Saint Paul school board member Ann Carroll chimes in later in the conversation:
Now just hold on here a minute! Some of the posts on this topic are veering
way too close to racist comments, which is not tolerated on either this
Issues Forum or by SPPS.
“Racist comments?”
Read the thread. Before Carroll chimed in, one commenter (Gary Fishbach, friend of this blog and a noted Highland Park Republican) dropped a couple of pleas for fiscal sanity. A couple of DFLers responded.
And then Carroll cried “Racism”.
You’ll examine the thread, as I did, in vain for the faintest sign of racism…
…unless you believe, as Carroll seems to, that criticizing the name change, for any reason, is itself racist.
I’ll be asking Ann Carroll for comment.
The name change is just plain dumb - although not, perhaps, as disturbing as the curriculum change. “Service Learning” is education establishment shorthand for “shanghaiing students into serving as free labor for non-profits”. Like so much that passes for normal in the Saint Paul and Minneapolis public schools, it’s got very little to do with education, but much with paying chits to the educational establishment’s supporters, and making sure future generations get healthy doses of koolaid at an early age.
Cross-posted and comments welcome at Shot In The Dark.
