Tag Archives: presentism

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Renaming Portland’s Lynch Schools: the abandonment of reason

lynch_school_1900

It’s not right. It’s not wise.

It’s just not fair to the students at Lynch Meadows, Lynch Wood and Lynch View elementary schools in Portland’s Centennial District.

The three schools are set to lose the “Lynch” in their names before the next school year because the District decided the name “Lynch” is an epithet.  Many newer families coming into the district associate the name with America’s violent racial history, Centennial Superintendent Paul Coakley told The Oregonian.

This is (supposedly) adult educators gone mad.

What’s next? Renaming public buildings with names such as White ( lacks tolerance of diversity), Young (implies ageism), Jackson (he owned slaves,, you know), Wilson (a president who re-segregated the federal civil service) or Johnson (President Andrew Johnson obstructed political and civil rights for blacks after the Civil War, contributing to failure of Reconstruction.)

The overly censorious policing of language in order to spare sensitive young minds does the children no good. Instead of protecting the delicate young souls, it lays the foundation for later insistence on trigger warnings, objections to micro-aggressions, the shouting down of controversial speakers, and the unfortunate spread of presentism, the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts.

The correct response by the Centennial School District was not to cater to misconceptions about the word by abolishing its use, but to educate the schoolchildren about the historical roots of the use of the Lynch name at the schools and the philanthropic spirit of the Lynch family, and, yes, that the word “lynch” in America is also associated with the killing of black people, often by racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan.

As Jeremy Montgomery, whose son attends Lynch View Elementary School, told KATU, education would be a better solution. “See, I didn’t even know that (the schools were named after a charitable family). If people were more open to that and knew that, I couldn’t see it being a problem at all,” he said.

Tom Singerhouse, who went to Lynch View more than 50 years ago, expressed a similar view to KATU, saying teachers should be teaching their students about the significance of the Lynch family.

Lynch Wood Elementary’s website already provides a history lesson about the school’s name. Take a look (below). It’s fascinating reading and would be a good basis for a valuable history lesson with the schools’ students. They’d certainly learn a lot more than they would from deleting “Lynch” from their school’s name.

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                        A History of Lynch Schools

A booklet produced by the Civic Leadership Class of 1964

The name “Lynch School” dates back to 1900 when a one room school was built on the present site of the Lynch School at S.E. 162nd Avenue and Division Street, says a website a reprint of a booklet produced by the Civic Leadership Class of 1964.

According to the booklet, on March 13, 1900, Patrick and Catherine Lynch donated one acre of ground located at Section Line Road (Division) and Barker Road (162nd Ave.) on which was built a new one room school pictured on the front of this booklet.

This is the origin of the name “Lynch.” The Lynch farm originally consisted of 160.3 acres granted to Patrick and Catherine Lynch on August 1, 1874, under the Homestead Act passed by Congress in 1862. The original deed granted the land to the Lynch family and was signed by Ulysses S. Grant, President of the United States. Although the property included land on both sides of Section Line Road, the farm home was located across Division Street in the vicinity of The Hut, a restaurant now situated at 167th and Division.

The deed to the property donated to the Lynch School District in 1900 describes the location of the survey markers marking the boundary of the property as being located three inches below the wheel ruts in the adjoining roads. The stone markers had chiseled grooves on the top side for identification purposes. The stone marking the corner of the property at S.E. Division 10″ x 15″ x 22″ set flat side down 3″ below surface of gravel in the north wheel rut of graveled Section Line Road and tamped firmly in place”.

The area around the Lynch School was entirely devoted to agriculture in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Threshing was a community undertaking and many boys missed school because they were needed at harvest time.

The original one room Lynch School which started with fifteen to twenty students increased in number until in 1914 there were about fifty students in the one room school. Some say there were as many as sixty for the one and only teacher. Some of the former students of those “good old days” say that the only way the teacher could handle all eight grades was to divide up her time so each class had a recitation period. She would start in the morning with the first grade, and would by afternoon, finally get around to the eighth grade.

Meanwhile, the rest of the classes were working on assigned work. Of course, some activities and classes were jointly carried on together, such as music, writing practice, and practicing for school plays. In 1915 a large multiple purpose room, which served as an auditorium and meeting place for community functions was built onto the existing one room school. Folding doors were extended during the day making it into two classrooms giving the school a grand total of three rooms.

The Lynch P.T.A. was first organized in 1917 and undertook as its main project, the serving of hot soup and chocolate at lunch time. Residents who remember those days, say it was prepared at the W.B. Steel home where the Big Dollar Shopping Center is now located. Several of the boys would be asked to go over and carry back the kettles of soup and cocoa along with a pail or two of water before lunch.

 

 

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Black student demands to erase history at the University of Oregon: just say no.

DeadyHall

The University of Oregon’s first building opened on Oct. 16, 1876. It was named Deady Hall for Judge Matthew Deady in 1893.

On November 17, 2015, the University of Oregon’s Black Student Task Force sent a list of twelve demands to four top university administrators.

The group asserted that “the historical structural violence and direct incidents of cultural insensitivity and racism” on campus create an environment that prevents black students from succeeding.

In order to create “a healthy and positive campus climate” for black students, the Black Student Task Force said:

“We…DEMAND that you work with us and implement the following list of programs:

  • Change the names of all of the KKK related buildings on campus. DEADY Hall will be the first building to be renamed.
  • We cannot and should not be subjugated to walk in any buildings that have been named after people that have vehemently worked against the Black plight, and plight of everyone working to achieve an equitable society.
  • Allowing buildings to be named after members who support these views is in direct conflict with the university’s goal to keep black students safe on campus.
  • We demand this change be implemented by Fall 2016”

University President Michael Schill appointed a committee of administrators, faculty, and students to develop criteria for evaluating whether to strip the names off Deady Hall and Dunn Hall, part of Hamilton residence hall, because of their association with racist actions in Oregon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Once the criteria were established, Schill assembled a panel of three historians to research the history of Matthew P. Deady and Frederick S. Dunn to guide his decision-making.

The historians recently released an exhaustive, extensively footnoted 34-page report.

The report described the complex lives of both men, lives filled with negatives, positives, ambiguity and contradictions.

Deady, though a territorial legislator, constitutional convention delegate and presiding officer, and U.S. District Judge for thirty-four years, supported slavery.

Dunn, though he graduated from the University of Oregon, spent the vast majority of his career there and enjoyed a national reputation as a classics scholar, was also a prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan and led the Eugene chapter.

Based on the historians’ report, there is no question that both men held views and engaged in activities that would be considered loathsome today.

But that does that mean their names should be summarily erased from history at the University of Oregon.

To surrender to the Black Students Task Force’s demands would be to embrace presentism in all its intellectual weakness, to endorse interpreting historical events without any reference to the context or complexity of the time.

If there’s one thing students should learn in college, it’s that It makes no sense to see the world entirely in the present tense.

In looking at history, it is critical to acknowledge the degree to which our position and experiences color how we look at bygone days, places and people.

Presentism “…encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation,” said Lynn Hunt, president of the American Historical Association. “Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior…,”

Many of our forbears espoused racial views that are today considered abhorrent, including people we still consider exemplars of the American experience.

In addition, somebody’s historical goodness and worth should not be based on just one criteria.

“…making race the only basis of judgment…does violence to the spirit of historical investigation, because it reduces complex individuals to game show contestants who must simply pass or fail a single test,” says David Greenberg, a professor of history and journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.

In April 2016, Schill and Vice President for Equity and Inclusion Yvette Alex-Assensoh published a letter to the campus community saying, “…we recognize that we can and must do more as an institution to meet the needs of Black students”, but made no commitments on the building renaming issue.

When Schill does make a decision, I earnestly hope he will just say no.