I taught at Tacoma’s Wilson High, and changing name is OK. But ironies hard to ignore
The Tacoma School Board recently approved a name change for Tacoma’s Woodrow Wilson High School, where I taught for 25 years. Beginning July 1 the school will be known as Dolores Silas High School.
Dr. Silas has been a longtime, highly regarded educator and community activist. The honor is fully deserved.
Woodrow Wilson is no longer considered an appropriate name given the 28th president’s policy of promoting racial segregation in federal agencies and his general lack of criticism for segregation in the wider society. He also gave high praise to D.W. Griffith’s 1915 movie “Birth of a Nation”, which largely portrays the Ku Klux Klan as America’s savior during post Civil War Reconstruction.
Renaming Wilson High School follows the decision by Princeton University to drop Wilson’s name from its school of public policy, declaring: “Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college.”
Still, this recent manifestation of fulfilling the “woke” agenda of cleansing our institutions of any hint of honoring politically or culturally suspect historical “heroes” does create certain ironies.
It is easy enough, though costly, to erase names from school and government buildings. It is quite another thing to erase the ideas promulgated by these individuals, which are largely embraced by the very people who are damning their memory for their racist views.
Wilson may have been slow to recognize the injustices of Jim Crow America. However, he was perhaps the dominant figure in formulating and promoting the ideology of progressivism, which swept through the nation during his administration and has had several reincarnations, finding fertile soil in our educational institutions at all levels.
Wilson strenuously argued the natural law foundations of the Declaration of Independence, as prudentially applied in the U.S. Constitution, had been superseded by the Darwinian principle of evolutionary change.
His straightforward idea has become the basis for educators to challenge any values that have been given priority because of the recognition they derive from universally valid truths. This transformation now serves as the foundation for critical race theory increasingly finding favor in our schools.
Forty three years ago a small book written by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” argued the purpose of education was to equip students with the skills to critically assess society’s institutions for the purpose of bringing about revolutionary change.
This “critical pedagogy” turns the whole of the educational enterprise on its head. Schools are no longer seen as inculcating values consistent with advancing society’s goals under an umbrella of constitutional norms, with natural law as the ultimate measuring stick of progress.
Instead, these norms are seen as the engine of oppression based on race, gender, sex, social and economic status.
Consistent with the progressive worldview, the Marxist program of the working class ushering in a new socialist economic world order has been renewed and transformed. Now, the engine of revolution is race and a host of other “identity” characteristics.
Consider staff training sessions held in the Seattle School District last year: Schools were charged with committing “spirit murder” of native and other minority populations. White teachers were encouraged to “disown their whiteness” and atone for their “white privilege.”
I suspect Woodrow Wilson would not have been disappointed having his name removed from schools and universities. That is a small price to pay for the progressive wheel rolling over any obstacles blocking the path to redemption.
Though, in reality, the realization of this progressive dream is more likely to lead to a political and cultural nightmare.
Mike Jankanish of Tacoma is a retired teacher of 46 years, former chair of the history department at Wilson High School and an occasional op-ed contributor on education issues for The News Tribune.