Out from the Shadows

There was a time when it was the fashion for bloggers and tweeters to have a “handle” or monicker and leave it at that. That was quite a while ago. Most folks put their real names out there this days, and I think that’s a better idea. When you trade in opinion, people should know you are willing to stand by your work.

In a similar way, there was a time when people writing about the goings-on at the school system felt it necessary to protect their identities. Former leadership was known to be punitive and retaliatory. Deviation from the tightly controlled “message” was not to be tolerated. Communicating a differing point of view during those times felt dangerous. To my knowledge, that is not the case anymore.

All of this is merely a prelude to my making the following request:

Come out, come on out. Put your name on your work.

I think our community would benefit from knowing who you are. Here’s a list of accounts I’d like to see step out of their anonymity. Some may be known to a small inner circle of readers, but, in my opinion, that’s not enough. Are there any others I am forgetting?

HoCo APFO
HCPSS Community Shares
*A Better Howard
mjm_not_super

If you want to influence the conversation, fine. But be willing to show your face.

*A correction from reader Ilana Bittner:

A Better Howard isn’t in the dark. Their initial post had the 4 authors names, and many of their posts (at least the ones I’ve seen) are signed specifically with the author’s name(s).

Mark Breaux
Dave Myers
Phil Nichols
Julia Sanger

Comments

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

They Can Wait

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Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

Village Green/Town²

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