**The opinions in this article are those of the author and not representative of the thoughts and views of Her Campus*
On October 24th, Travis Fedschun of Fox News wrote an article about Oklahoma City schools named after Confederate generals being renamed.
“The Oklahoma City Public Schools School Board voted 7-0 to change the names of the Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Isaac Stand Watie schools.”
Fedschun quoted the district officials, “It is expected to cost around $40,000 to rename all three schools.”
My question is, why are we going through the troubles of renaming schools, and even as far as taking down Confederate statues?
And why are we still talking about this?
I grew up in Virginia, which is obviously considered a southern state. Before I could go through the state’s high school curriculum of learning about Virginia history, I moved to wonderful Wyoming and had the opportunity to learn about Wyoming’s history. I still had a passion for learning about the Civil War in Virginia.
After learning about the Civil War, it should be common knowledge that the Confederates were in the wrong (duh).
But is it really worth throwing away over 100 years of our history?
Let’s be real here. We could spend the money used on renaming schools elsewhere. Perhaps cleaning up our tattered common-core curriculum (that, by the way, still doesn’t work for everyone). That $40,000 could be used on saving certain programs in our school systems… *cough cough* the art and music programs? And don’t lie to yourself, it’s common knowledge that many schools are ignoring them to make room for more common core classes, such as in my middle school back home.
And the fact that we’re throwing away history makes me even more livid. Those statues and those public school names serve as a reminder of what happened 150 years ago.
Isn’t it common knowledge that history is likely to repeat itself? If we aren’t constantly reminded of this, will we follow the path that history wants to follow, that it’s already followed many times before.
If we continue to take down Civil War artifacts, will we soon be burning Civil War books? Will we forget all that has happened because we destroyed the history?
The statues or school names aren’t commemorating how great those men were. I can’t state that enough. They are there to remind us of the wrongdoing done in that era.
Keep the statues. Keep the public school names. Keep the history.