Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
“Last year, the Fayetteville, Arkansas, public school district closed its aging Jefferson Elementary School, replacing it with a shiny new building on the other side of the highway. The new building needed a name; the school board could have transferred the Jefferson name along with the students but did not do so. Or they could have chosen the name of another president; for example, they could have honored Bill Clinton, who had been a law professor at the university in Fayetteville and later became governor and then president. But if Clinton was thought inappropriate for a school name, the board could have honored the late J. William Fulbright, who hailed from Fayetteville, graduated from its university, and was the university’s president before serving five terms in the U.S. Senate. Indeed, there is no shortage of people the board could have chosen to honor. Instead, they chose to name the school ‘Owl Creek,’ after a small ditch with a trickle of water that runs by the school.”
If I were a student, I’d rather be able to debate the merits of presidents without being put in the position of seeming to attack my own school. You tell me: is “Ronald Reagan Elementary School” a teachable moment? Or just a sneaky way to enshrine a particular point of view? And before you answer, consider “William Jefferson Clinton High School.”
