Laura Berman

Bland name plays it safe

Name it after Bo, some said. The great coach's death coincided with the final throes of Ann Arbor's newest high school's naming. But Schembechler -- with his ties to a university beloved only to some, with his greatness in a sport not enjoyed by all -- had deficits in the school naming biz.

Another nominee, Jack Lousma, the astronaut, lost out in Ann Arbor, too

But the naming committee's final decision wound up being perfectly in sync with national trends: When it opens in 2008, the city's newest high school will not salute a man, woman or child's accomplishment.

Instead, it will honor the view from the high school's fourth floor: Skyline High School.

It's a name that skirts all controversy and confirms social scientist Jay P. Greene's view that school boards and civic groups have abandoned a key, if old-fashioned, American idea that school names honor people we value. A hill, a vale, a knotty pine -- these natural features are pleasing to all and, as important, difficult to ridicule or even debate on talk radio or on the editorial pages.

This isn't only a hypothesis. Greene, a professor of education at the University of Arkansas, conducted a study for the Manhattan Institute, culling the names of 100,000 schools in seven states and proving that naming schools after presidents has never been less popular.

Manatee tops Washington

He'd expected to find the names of dead white men in decline, replaced by those of women and ethnic heroes. Instead, he and two research associates discovered a major move toward naming schools after town names, natural geographical features and subdivisions.

In Arizona, schools named for the roadrunner bird tied with Thomas Jefferson schools. In Florida, George Washington had five schools named for him -- but he was handily beaten by Florida's native mammal, the manatee.

The problem with names such as Paint Creek Middle School (Lake Orion) or Meadowview Elementary (Milford) is that they fail to teach anything, Greene argues.

Value in civic courage

"Local communities should go through the task of talking about who they should honor, who they should encourage their children to emulate. To avoid that is to avoid a civic responsibility."

School board members know that naming a school after any political figure is likely to cause debate and dissension. And so the default position is to play it safe. To go bland -- or, Greene found -- blandly promotional, by incorporating a subdivision name into the school's title.

One Ann Arbor blogger quipped that Skyline High detractors should be relieved: "It could have been Domino's Pizza High School or Pfizer Phigh Pschool."

Civic courage is a valuable commodity. Try naming a high school to see why it's in such short supply.

You can reach Laura Berman at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.