Posted on 11/17/2017 5:43:45 PM PST by artichokegrower
For decades, a Berkeley elementary school has carried the name of a prominent conservationist and co-founder of the Sierra Club. But the 19th century geologist, Joseph LeConte, also was a slave owner and munitions supplier to the Confederacy during the Civil War, and parents wanted his name off their children’s school.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Proud of what exactly?
Here a conservationist and Sierra Club founder is too much, but I guess Margaret Sanger and Franklin D. Roosevelt (Japanese internment) still get high marks for now.
Mount Le Conte in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park is named after him. They better not mess with that.
Interesting that the internment of the Japanese often gets mentioned when noting that Roosevelt wasn’t the great Liberal God the liberals make of him. And that was bad. But nowhere near as bad as locking out German Jews begging to come to America.
"We're sorry if you got that impression."
... Gosh, I thought that was a famous SNL line, but I can't scare it up with a Google search. Maybe we really are whitewashing the past!
The school board should consider naming the school————
“Pancho Villa” Elementary School. :>)
I am a proud graduate of Columbus Elementary School, but I am even prouder of the fact that the school is now named after Rosa Parks
——
I have no problem naming schools after Rosa Parks, but in terms of historical consequence, Rosa might be 1/100 as important as Chris.
When teaching world history to jr high students I would bring up Martin Luther, kids would ask if I meant Martin Luther King. Now it’s understandable seeing MLK has a holiday and all, but they were shocked when I told them that Luther changed a big part of the world and that in comparison MLK was not such a big deal.
Lot of peaks explored and named by 19th century geologist, Joseph LeConte in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. They going to go after all of them?
In current history books, the Japanese internment gets much more play than D-Day, the battle of Midway, etc. if you look just at the pictures (which, alas, is all that a lot of students do, you’d think that most of the fighting was done by black soldiers and most of the flying was done by women.
Why not name the schools after Felix Dzerzhinsky, Lavrenti Beria, Josef Stalin, or Trofim Lysenko? Walter Ulbricht, Erich Honecker or Markus Wolf?
I went to this school for 1st grade. Guess I’ll have to wipe it off my resume now. LOL.
“But nowhere near as bad as locking out German Jews begging to come to America.”
Ben Hecht used to say that FDR’s biggest accomplishment during WWII was failing (or refusing) to save about half a million Jews who might otherwise have been spared the death camps.
My vote is for Zsa Zsa Gabor elementary........
I did too, in 1956. The Key System was still running, and Berkeley and Oakland were still clean, safe towns.
I bet the progtards that run things in Berkeley these days rename the school Barack Hussein Obama Elementary.
Perhaps not so much advised as cautioned.
The city should also be renamed because it was named for George Berkeley, an Irish academic and philosopher who was at one time a slave owner.
I went to LeConte Elementary School in SF. They renamed it several decades ago to some jerk’s name. The school is on Army Street, which they renamed to Cesar Chavez Street. I still call it Army Street. I won’t hold my breath to see them name streets after Donald Trump, they’d rather name them after communists.
Now that is a great place to hike and lodge.
Me too! Grew up at the corner of Russell St and Shattuck Ave. Went there for kindergarten and 1st grade. Then moved to Orinda in 1959.
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