What a great example of bike shedding: spending time on naming schools instead of figuring out how to educate children during a pandemic.<p>> The term was coined as a metaphor to illuminate Parkinson’s Law of Triviality. Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively. It was popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by Poul-Henning Kamp[1] and has spread from there to the software industry at large.<p><a href="https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding" rel="nofollow">https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bikeshedding</a>
> Paul Revere’s participation in a Revolutionary War campaign “connected to the colonization of the Penobscot” tribe<p>It’s even more ridiculous than it sounds. As documented in the Families for San Francisco report <a href="https://familiesforsanfrancisco.com/Updates/" rel="nofollow">https://familiesforsanfrancisco.com/Updates/</a> <a href="https://familiesforsanfrancisco.com/gallery/School%20Renaming%20Essay%20%28FINAL%20v2%29.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://familiesforsanfrancisco.com/gallery/School%20Renamin...</a> Revere was fighting the British in the Penobscot Expedition, not colonizing the Penobscot tribe of Native Americans as claimed by the School Names Advisory Committee.<p>> Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s role in a controversy over a Civic Center Plaza flag display that included the Confederate banner<p>This is ironic because in the resolution that the School Board adopted in 2018 that started this renaming business (<a href="https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/AYV7FN7557A3/$file/184-10A1%20Rename%20Schools.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://go.boarddocs.com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/files/AYV7FN7557...</a>), Feinstein is listed as one of the schools that they “proudly, confidently and with the advocacy and support of the community” renamed schools <i>to</i>! But now, the School Board has decided that it is time to rename the school <i>away</i> from her name.<p>> One school was found to be named after a street that was named after a South Carolina county that was named after an English politician who was impeached by the House of Commons in the 17th century.<p>They’re talking about Clarendon Elementary School, which is named after Clarendon Ave. The committee member claimed/speculated that this street is named after Clarendon County, South Carolina, but I haven’t found documentation proving this (it started showed up in maps of San Francsico around 1890). Clarendon County is named after Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, who owned the Carolinas and who oppressed people by violating habeas corpus in the 1660s.<p>Given the manifest stupidity at the school board, I wonder whether there will be increasing interest in creating new charter schools or interest in converting existing schools to charter schools (which must be approved by a majority of teachers).
These guys also got trapped in a purity spiral that lead to some pretty ridiculous decisions:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan#2001,_destruction_by_the_Taliban" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan#2001,_destr...</a>
I feel like we've moved from religious purity tests from the far right to secular purity tests from the far left. I'm definitely a proponent of horseshoe theory.
Does anyone on mobile have an issue with SF Chronicle? I get a pop-up banner asking me to subscribe to view the article but then when I hit back they hijack the back button and I'm stuck in a loop on their site with the banner.
Good grief! It is these kind of shenanigans that fuel the crazy 'slippery slope' arguments...<p>Short-sighted moves like this are just going to make it that much harder to stop memorializing actual bad people in places that are less "woke" than SF..
It seems like their criteria for naming schools should simply be “PS-1” to avoid all controversy.<p>If we are to judge historical figures only by their failings, then even Martin Luther King, Jr. would fail to live up to the impossible standards being used.<p>Gandhi would also fall short, depending on one’s perspective.<p>Insanity. The irony is that the attempt to be “inclusive” is actually exclusive to some. For example, George Washington is a hero to many Americans, as is Paul Revere. Stripping their names, to be, makes me feel less included. While naming a school after Barack Obama seems to be on trend, but historically just as fraught with moral minefields as any other former president.
We've seen something similar in the Seattle area. We don't have too many names to erase here, but the school district has become more and more overtly political, injecting all manners of the progressive "social justice" agenda into school curricula and activities (for example, "ethnic studies" math: <a href="https://reason.com/2019/10/22/seattle-math-oppressive-cultural-woke/" rel="nofollow">https://reason.com/2019/10/22/seattle-math-oppressive-cultur...</a>). The people voted onto the school board who enable all this are basically unknown random people who are winning elections solely due to the degree of virtue signalling in their platform. And even though the current Seattle schools superintendent is very politically progressive in her work, she quickly went from a favorite to not-activist-enough, and is now resigning due to pressure from a very loud but very small cadre of activists (<a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-public-schools-superintendent-denise-juneau-will-resign-in-june/" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/seattle-...</a>).<p>Although our schools mostly don't have names tied to key American historical figures, we do have a major university named for George Washington (as is the state). BLM activists have repeatedly vandalized the George Washington statue in the middle of the University of Washington Seattle campus (typically pouring red paint all over it). Inspired by CHAZ (the "autonomous zone" later renamed to CHOP), the UW BLM group took over the statue and set up an 'art installation' (<a href="https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/14/44267722/uw-protesters-embark-on-month-long-art-installation-at-george-washington-statue" rel="nofollow">https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/08/14/44267722/uw-prot...</a>) to push their skewed perspectives. The spineless university leadership largely looked the other way and remained silent through their occupation of this space, and as these statues and other buildings were repeatedly vandalized. It's also interesting seeing the alliances that build up to condone and encourage such political vandalism - for example, Real Change - a Seattle area homelessness advocacy group - came out in support of it (<a href="https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2020/09/02/deconstructing-george" rel="nofollow">https://www.realchangenews.org/news/2020/09/02/deconstructin...</a>).<p>The erasure of the names of key figures like Lincoln is a normalization of attacks on symbols of the country's foundations, which is just a stepping stone to attacking those principles directly. I find the role of schools (like SF schools) and universities in enabling a political "dirty war" to be grotesque. We need to return to normalcy, where these spaces should strive to be neutral and not act on the demands of fringe activists who have all the time in the world to push for such policies.
One big consequence of having so few children in the city of SF, is that the school boards are voted in by people with no direct interest in making sure that children actually get educated. So the board is simply used as a proxy for other political agendas.<p>Should only people with school-age children be allowed to vote on school board members? This inclines me towards yes, although I understand the arguments against.