Skip to main content

More of the Same


Almost exactly one year ago:

Pride and Shame

The post contrasts the story of WLHS grad Armon Wilson, who walked all the way to his polling place to be there when they opened, with this social media post from another young person in Howard County:


This week brings a very similar story. It’s covered in the November issue of The Business Monthly.

Eagle Scout Fights Back Against Hate Crime

In short: Ryan Lippe, a senior at Marriotts Ridge High School, created an outdoor classroom for Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez Church Preschool as his Eagle Scout project. When he returned to the site some time later he discovered that “someone had carved hate symbols and phrases into every bench.”

The story of how Lippe responded will make you feel good. But the efforts that someone (or more than one person, perhaps) took to deface what was intended to be a learning space for preschoolers make me feel heartsick. 

More of the same.

More of the same.

More of the same in Howard County and still people say that calling it out and asking people to face it is “divisive.”

Here’s what Eagle Scout Ryan Lippe said about his experience coming face-to-face with those hate symbols and phrases:


Excerpt from The Business Monthly, November, 2021


So do I.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

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 ...