January 29, 2020

Regarding a recent seriously foolish move on the part of the San Francisco School Board, to change the names of several of the city’s schools, please see this article from yesterday’s The Guardian. If the people after whom these schools are named are to be criticized, use the moment as a teaching vehicle to enhance current students’ understanding of history. George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Dianne Feinstein? Yes, none of these was (or is) a politically correct purist, and we can talk about that. But erase them from public notice, as the school board suggests?

I suggest sending the school board back to school.

Have them read the more than 16,000 books that have been written about Abraham Lincoln and the no doubt like number of books written about George Washington. And then, have them take a look at Dianne Feinsteins’s admirable handling of the murder of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone in 1978, whom she succeeded as mayor, and her ongoing laudable career as a solid liberal leader in the U.S. Senate. Thus taught about these figures in the much broader way that apparently was not provided by their education, perhaps the school board (about whom little has been written) will better understand the nuttiness of what they are proposing.