Dismissing San Anselmo High option raises questions
Another absurdity has emerged in the drama over dumping the name Sir Francis Drake from the institution temporarily known as High School 1327.
Many Ross Valley residents initially urged that, if the school must be renamed, it be called San Anselmo High. Given its Hub City location, that pick could have been an uncontroversial compromise.
The suggestion was summarily rejected by the school site committee honchoed by school Principal Liz Seabury.
Two reasons were given for spurning the proposal for San Anselmo High. The first, which received the bulk of attention, is that applying the town’s name to the school ignores other Ross Valley communities where its students reside.
The second excuse is curious.
According to the report published in the Marin IJ, San Anselmo is named after a Catholic priest and thus has religious connotations. The site committee seems to think that a public school incorporating the name of a religious figure is forbidden.
What’s appalling isn’t just the lack of historic research, but that the committee relied on an explanation that’s preposterous on its face.
The definitive book titled “California Spanish PlaceNames” explains how “San Anselmo and San Quentin got their Sans attached … being named for Indians who at baptism assumed Christian names of saints.”
In reading the website for New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College, I learned that Anselm (Anselmo in Spanish) lived from 1033 to 1109. “(He) was a Benedictine (Catholic) monk, Christian philosopher and scholar who is recognized for many intellectual accomplishments, including the application of reason in exploring the mysteries of faith and for his definition of theology as ‘faith seeking understanding.”
That brief summary of Anselmo’s origin is likely far more comprehensive than HS 1327’s students are taught about the name of their school’s hometown.
The breakdown of teaching history accompanies weak civics instruction across the nation. Recounting the good and the bad of the past is an essential component.
Teach history’s negatives and positives across the board, including the deeds of White people, Native Americans and the historical baggage all immigrants and migrants inevitably bring to their new land.
Even the much-ridiculed San Francisco Board of Education, which proposes purging the supposedly offensive names of 44 schools, didn‘t banish from its title the name of the very Catholic Saint Francis of Assisi.
Quick, someone warn UCLA. The name Los Angeles is from El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles. It is translated as the village of our lady, the queen of the angels.
Tam Union teachers and administrators, including Seabury, could benefit from history classes about California and Mexico, as well as Latino culture and introductory Spanish.
Seabury should know that, within California, rejecting names because of religious associations is preposterous. She attended University of California, Santa Cruz (translated as holy cross), Cal State Sacramento (the seven Catholic sacraments) and San Jose State (named for Saint Joseph). SJSU is located near the Guadalupe River (named after Our Lady of Guadalupe — the patron of Mexico) in Santa Clara County (after Saint Clair).
Thankfully, Seabury isn’t administrating San Rafael High where the Archangel Raphael is the namesake.
That the option of San Anselmo High should be jettisoned isn’t just silly, it’s a rebuke to the intelligence of its students, Tam Union taxpayers and Ross Valley residents. The idea is insulting to California’s Latino community, whose Spanish-speaking forbearers bestowed these names on the land. Even more troubling, it’s an example of the lack of intellectual rigor mocking the liberal arts.
Progressives properly condemn anti-intellectualism and cultural insensitivity on much of the political right. The Drake name-change fiasco demonstrates that some on the left share the same disdain for logic and rejection of cultures who fail to comply with their self-assured ideology.