That led to all kinds of silliness. Here in Madison the culmination of the ludicrousness happened when a student stumbled on the fact that a big rock on the UW campus had been referred to by an offensive name… once… a hundred years ago. So, the UW spent $50,000 to move the rock to an undisclosed location where it could no longer do “harm.”
That incident was just slap stick, but real harm was done when the UW was complicit in trashing the reputation of one of its most accomplished alums. Frederic March was not only a great actor, but he was an early champion of civil rights. For reasons that will remain a mystery, he was briefly a member of a campus group calling itself the Ku Klux Klan. The chancellor ordered up an investigation which found that it appeared to be a sort of academic honors society and it never engaged in any racist activity. Nobody knows why they chose that unfortunate name, but March was not a racist. In fact, quite the opposite. No matter. At the height of this madness, March’s name was stripped from a campus theatre and responsible adults in the campus administration refused to replace it, disregarding the sifting and winnowing done by their own study.
All of that was at the height of the terror. One thing Donald Trump has accomplished is to change the atmosphere so that it’s hard to imagine that this kind of madness would take place in the current environment. To be sure, Trump has done this the way he’s done everything else: he’s used a sledge hammer when a scalpel was called for. Nonetheless, an environment where administrators might feel free to say that they were not going to move a rock because somebody once called it by a bad name and they weren’t going to trash a good man because he once belonged to an organization with a similarly bad name would be a refreshing change.
So, while I don’t agree with everything that’s being done at the Federal and state levels to push back on DEI, I do very much welcome a broad adjustment back to sanity.
But one place that is as resistant to change as any is public education. We don’t have to look hard for an example. See the “unconference” sponsored by DPI. To quote last Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal story on this:
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The taxpayer funded Madison School District long used Reading Recovery…
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
