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How lovely it must be for conservatives today; how triumphantly they must have achieved all their goals. How else to explain the existence of the recent “Civic Report” we stumbled across on the Manhattan Institute’s Website, in which that bastion of urbane conservatism exposes a horrifying trend: Apparently there’s been a precipitous decline in the naming of public schools in the U.S. after presidents and other notables. Egad!
Are schools instead being named after abortion advocates and gay icons? (Go, Streisand High Fighting Schnozzes!) Nope, it seems instead there’s been a dramatic increase in schools named after “natural features,” such as “hills, trees, or animals.” Which could mean, the authors fret, that the “civic mission of public education” in the country might be imperiled. In Florida, they note, only five schools are named after George Washington, while eleven are named after manatees. (Again: Egad!) Closer to home, in New Jersey, the percentage of schools named after presidents and founding figures has dropped since 1948 from 21 percent to 7 percent. Sadly, but blessedly, New York wasn’t included in the study. —Tayt Harlin
What’s in a Name? The Decline in The Civic Mission of School Names [Manhattan Institute]
