A modest proposal for renaming schools whose present names are now considered politically/racially incorrect
Give them numbers. That way the names will never have to be changed as the historical revisionists expand their targets – at least, I doubt that numbers will ever be their targets, although I wouldn’t put it past them.
When I was growing up in New York, it was only high schools that had names that were actually used. Our elementary schools had numbers after the acronym “PS” for “public school.” This was the way it was, and we never thought anything of it. Over time, the numbers grew to have a certain emotional valence – one might be the school that everyone knew was “good,” another one “bad,” and still another one “middling.”
Junior high schools (there was actually only one, because that was a very new concept) had names, but they also had numbers and it was the numbers that we used. Force of habit, perhaps. High schools did have names, but the names usually represented the geographic area they served.
Anyway, that’s my little contribution to the wokeness that is so obligatory these days. Harvard could be #1, if it liked, and Yale #2. Or they could duke it out.
Did I say “duke”? Duke University, it turns out, is one of the worst offenders in the name game. Not only did the man after which it’s named have the dread first name “Washington” and a last name that indicates a consciousness of class, but he was a Confederate veteran and a purveyor of tobacco.
No, no, NO! I’m afraid it’s numbers for Duke, too.
Don’t forget the sciences. Not only is there Newton’s law of gravity, which I suppose could be shortened to just the Law of Gravity, but many if not most of the units used in physics and engineering were directly named after famous scientists.
Volt — after Volta
Amp — after Ampere
Ohm — after Ohm (really)
Gauss — after Gauss
Tesla — after Tesla
Pascal — after Pascal
Newton — after Newton
Curie — after Curie
and on and on.
For a several centuries the highest award a scientist could get was not the Nobel prize — that impresses outsiders more than insiders — but to have a unit named after him or her.
Changing all these names would mean major re-writes of almost all science textbooks in all the sciences in all the world’s languages. Hey, maybe from the wokists’ point of view that’s a plus, giving all their newly-graduated editors scope to vet the updated textbooks for political correctness…
Naturally this Tarheel would be happy to see Duke get hit in this cancel insanity. My husband has been calling it “The University of Southern New Jersey” for a long time.
“Over time, the numbers grew to have a certain emotional valence – one might be the school that everyone knew was ‘good’, another one ‘bad,’ and still another one ‘middling.'”
Well, then, numbers will have to be swopped round regularly to prevent numerical association discrimination!
And, will 13s be skipped? And, what of 666 – too attractive for the wrong reasons?
How about we take the existing name of the school and convert it to the equivalent number in hexadecimal or something? Maybe like this: “Harvard” = 8 + 1 + 18 + 22 + 1 + 18 + 4 = 72, which is 48 in hex. Or could alternatively write out the base-10 ordinal assignments in sequence and assign the base-16 based on that instead, in which case 8118221184 goes to 1E3E23980.
I figure we could have all pre-Civil War universities use the short designation as a concession to their antiquity. My alma mater would thus be known as “College 5F”, which is a good deal less unwieldy than “College 6510678E4E4B”.
STUDENT FROM 666 HIGH will get special jobs.
D.Cohen, it’s worse than you imagine. Sure, change the names of the units. However, what they really want, and I was told this several years ago, is for us to stop teaching “white man physics”. Why? Well, “racism”, of course. And if pressed the supplemental reason is that since it’s “white man physics”, it really can’t be correct as the physics of people of color is never considered. After all, the physics developed in Africa has been “systematically suppressed” over the past 500 years. Newton’s results are most likely wrong because those in Africa probably came up with a different result.
I know, sounds like the Babylon Bee, but they are dead serious. Just as I was retiring, they were turning their sights on physics, chem, and math, and starting to demand these exact reforms.
neo, numbering schools will never do . . .
BEGIN EXCERPT
As the [New York] Times article explained, the number 88 represents the phrase “Heil Hitler,” because H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. White supremacists are also fond of the number 18 to represent the initials A.H. (Other tight-knit groups use a similar code: The Hells Angels, for example, are attached to the number 81.)
The late David Lane, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and co-founder of a white-power revolutionary group, detailed his philosophy in an article called “88 Precepts.” . . .
Magic numbers abound among white supremacists. The digits 4/20 celebrate Hitler’s birthday, and the number 5 represents resistance to law enforcement in the form of this five-word response to interrogation: “I have nothing to say.” The number 311 refers to the Ku Klux Klan, because K is the 11th letter, repeated three times.
END EXCERPT
Source:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2008/10/14-and-88-why-white-supremacists-love-the-numbers.html
. . . among others.
M J R, to say nothing of the numerology found in many sermons from Louis Farrakhan. We’d end with no numbers being acceptable.
I didn’t know the Nazis liked 420. It’s also liked by a very different crowd:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)
Among other elements of Western Civilization, wokenistas have deemed numbers, reason, logic, objectivity, and meritocracy to be tools of white supremacy.
Lots of anti-semites in our nation’s history, but protesters don’t seem too bothered by that hideous trait. I doubt the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will be renamed soon. Nor will recipients of grants from the Ford Foundation be returning their checks.
Leland Stanford is problematic. Cecil Rhodes is very problematic. No more Rhodes Scholars.
How about “the University formerly known as Yale?”
It worked for Prince Nelson.
But assigned labels might promote exclusivity and attachment! Perhaps schools could consider a more fluid, diverse system, such as alphanumeric sequences that change at random intervals. gU7Fvqpk, Jkkza3VA, jrtp89X8, w7NSV7bC, 6wjnPkXDS
Obviously, the same system could be used for all forms of communi632@q.
This naming phenomenon reached the idiocy phase hear in western Washington when a suburb between Seattle and Tacoma got a new high school about 15 years ago and had to decide what to call it. The winner was Todd Beamer High School. Who is that? He was one of the guys on Flight 93 that stopped the terrorists. He had absolutely no ties to this area so it’s not like he was local guy. Just dumb.
Of course he was a white guy that attacked a bunch of Muslims so I’m sure that would never make it nowadays.
Just name them after the city and when there are multiple schools make them West, South, Central, etc. I’m sure that is problematic also though.
In Virginia the democrats gained control of the government and they are tearing down statues of democrats and changing the name of schools and roads named after democrats. It’s like Stalin purging the old Bolsheviks and revising history.
IMO take away all the left’s targets. Name them Harriet Tubman 123 or Maclom XQERTY. Sometimes it’s necessary to take away their wokeness ground. Leave them nowhere to hide.
Ray,
Learn to reload. You’ll need the ammo. Stick to your favorite rifle calibers, don’t bother with pistol calibers unless that is all you have.
I reload 8MM and 357 Magnum because I like my 357 carbine and revolvers. Your calibers may verily.
Will just put this here.
Trump’s Mt Rushmore speech was very good. Well delivered and kudos to the speechwriter.
Need to see more of that.
See it here if you missed it – he speaks at about 50:00
https://www.c-span.org/video/?473617-1/president-trumps-remarks-mt-rushmore-salute-america-event&live
Trump’s Mt Rushmore speech was very good. Well delivered and kudos to the speechwriter.
Yes, we’re not returning to the national and tribal conflicts (e.g. war, slavery, genocide) of indigenous people. Native Americans have constructed a nation that mitigates their progress, and present an opportunity, free of diversity and other classes of bigotry, for all Americans and our Posterity.
I am too conservative. Hence, my diploma from Cleveland Heights High School has been revoked.
I now identify with this: https://www.facebook.com/MoreScienceHighSchool
I’m with Esther, just assign everyone random password strings. We’ll probably need to do that with our personal names as well. What could be more elitist and patriarchal than family names passed down from colonial times, and through the male line, yet?
I’m far from confident that language itself is defensible. Let’s go back to grunts.
I now identify with this: https://www.facebook.com/MoreScienceHighSchool
Cappy: Don’t we all! The alternative was “Communist Martyrs High School.”
When life imitates Firesign…
__________________________________________
So come on, kids, line up, sign up and re-enlist today because we need more schooling for more students for More Science High!
–Principal Poop, “Firesign Theatre,” “Don’t Crush that Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8drMsE224Y
Hamburgers all over the road in Mystic Connecticut?
I went to PS 161, then 165, then Parsons Jr. High (named after the street is was on – I forgot the number). Leaving the city, elementary schools with names took some getting used to.
Maybe schools should all have bland, beige names like “Lawndale High” in the “Daria” MTV cartoon series….
Of course it will never end. Name a school after the town but what if the town is named after a super duper bad person name the school after the street it’s on but what if the street was named after a super duper bad person.
Use huxley’s example of something like ‘Lawndale’ well that’s problematic because slaves were forced to maintain the lawns on plantations by slave owners like George Washington so we can’t have that.
Even the numbers will be bad. PS 161? That’s very troubling because 161 slaves were killed by their evil owner after revolting in 1652 or something and we’ll get that ‘1619 Project’ woman to cook up a whole series of articles about why PS 161 is the best example yet of white supremacy.
Just call them all ‘school’ and hope the kids end up in the right place.
Well, binary, 0 and 1, is out. Black and white, what about brown? Also, male and female is fraught with social injustice. Finally, where do babies come from? Lost in imaginary numbers.
“Lost in imaginary numbers” sounds like a Twilight Zone episode.
And remember, the world is divided into 10 kinds of people.
MIT uses numbers for their courses, no names. Students memorize all of the important ones. So 21.01 is first year humanities. 6.01 is intro EE. 8.03 is electromagnetics ( the 8…tells you it’s taught in physics), et cetera. Try and sit through a luncheon conversation without knowing the numbers.