A pedestrian walks under a sign for Dianne Feinstein Elementary School in San Francisco on December 17, 2020.
Photo:
Jeff Chiu / Associated Press
Until the San Francisco Unified School District board removed the name of Dianne Feinstein from one of its public schools, we were unaware of the senator’s service in the Confederacy. While mayor of the city, she had replaced a vandalized Confederate flag that was part of a historic exhibition outside City Hall. So now Dianne Feinstein is saying goodbye to elementary school.
Feinstein’s purge is one of the banishments the council made Tuesday night when it voted 6-1 to change the name of 44 schools. The most absurd target is Abraham Lincoln, who waged the war that ended slavery. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Webster and Paul Revere were also canceled.
The criteria used to draw up the list of villains are whether they had promoted slavery, genocide, the oppression of women or “whether they had not significantly diminished the opportunities of all those among us for the right to life. , freedom and the pursuit of happiness ”.
But the name of a school is not a declaration of perfection. And a society that goes back in history to keep those of the past by today’s awakened standards will soon have no heroes to honor.
In a statement, Mayor London Breed said that while the name of the city’s schools is a conversation worth having, she can’t understand “why the School Board is putting forward a plan for all of these schools to have the name of April, when there is no plan for our children to return to the classroom ”.
With this measure, some future school boards should consider that the current school board is equally guilty of reducing opportunities, especially for the poor, for the way they have denied education to children in pandemics.
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It appeared in the print edition of January 29, 2021.