Rush Limbaugh Hates High Performance High Schools

Here in Chicago, we have a town just to the north, with a rich history, great Universities (Northwestern, National-Louis), great art, and...a great High School that has again and again demonstrated the way public education should be handled.

Evanston is a unique place, it is one of the few towns I know that is mixed race, mixed income, mixed religion, mixed everything. I've traveled around the country and still, Evanston will always be one of my favorite places. All my life I've spent time there...hunting through the bookstores, spending time in some of the Best Coffee Houses I've ever been in, strolling through the beach front parks, going to Northwestern Football games. The Minister who baptized me, a great man, settled into a beautiful old fashioned church there.

It's one of the few places I know of where upper income families (a substantial number of Evanston residences sell above the 5 mil mark) actually forgo private education for their children because Evanston Township High School has such an exemplary reputation.

It's the kind of place where cops volunteer to play pick-up basketball games with local kids.

Really, I can't do it justice, incredible street fairs, bars, restaurants, parks...everything.

Just last week the Christian Science Monitor featured them in an article from their Learning section titled "A Classroom as big as the world". Because they make sure their students know where Vietnam and Kuwaiti are on the map, and because they make sure the students know what cultures live there too, after years of hearing how high school students can't even tell you the name of their own state capitol, you would think such news should be welcome by conservatives and liberal alike.

No Such Luck.

Rush Limbaugh read this article of students excelling, and was horrified! You see Rush Limbaugh views educating yourself about the world, like Thomas Jefferson or Ben Franklin did, or perhaps even the Pope does, as the great sin "multi-culturalism". Wait, lets go to The Chicago Sun-Times for some snippets of Rush's foolishness after he read the CSM article "Rush Limbaugh said on his nationally syndicated radio show that Evanston Township High School students "don't know anything about World War II" and "they've probably never heard the name Adolf Hitler" because they're so focused on a multicultural curriculum."

But as Rush slanders the fine students without actually knowing something about them, he may have bit off a bit more than he can chew on this one, because the students aren't taking this laying down. They want to debate him on US History!

Here is another snippet of the educationally impaired Rush "What multiculturalists is, is balkanizing this country," Limbaugh said Tuesday. "People are coming here from various parts of the world and they're bringing their cultures with them and the multiculturalists are saying 'your culture is better than the American culture. The American culture is discriminatory, it's racist, sexist, bigot, homophobic.' "

But that is not what they teach at Evanston, as a matter of fact what they teach is the bedrock of our American freedom, that education, knowledge and enlightenment are essential to us. Interesting enough, I would say that this HS is the kind of place that Benjamin Franklin would approve of, which in my opinion is why Rush finds it offensive.

Here are some comments from the kids there:


"I think [a debate] would be great because then we'd prove him wrong and open up his opinion a little bit," Sarah Loeb, an ETHS sophomore, said Thursday.

"Maybe he might be a little intimidated because I don't know his basis for saying we don't know anything," Sarah said. "But I think he might be interested if he wants to live up to his reputation and back up his ideas so he doesn't look stupid."

"It's funny to me that someone would say we don't know about World War II -- we live in a large Jewish community," said Jane Biliter, a senior. Each year, the school hosts activities for Holocaust Remembrance Week. "Until 10th grade, all we did was U.S. and European history. It's just so false that what he says is funny."

"It's not even worth responding to," said Aaron Hamilton, a senior. "He has nothing to say about my education and my future. He's just a guy talking on the radio."

and here is the Supt:

"It struck me as incomprehensible that somebody would think multiculturalism antithetical to American values," Supt. Allan Alson said. "I was stunned that he had such certainty that our kids were not knowledgeable about basic American history when in fact our student do extremely well" on standardized tests in that area. "It's a shame he lets his conclusions determine his evidence."

Re-read that last sentence: "It's a shame he lets his conclusions determine his evidence."

A snippet of real evidence from the Sun-Times coverage:
"In 2003, ETHS won an excellence in international education award from the Asia Society and the Goldman Sachs Foundation. ETHS offers seven languages, including Japanese and Hebrew, and has several clubs with an international flavor, including Model United Nations and Amnesty International. Students and staff also point out that the school requires yearlong courses in U.S. history and Western civilization."

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Now don't get me wrong, ETHS has it's own problems, just like everyone else in the world...but....do you think Rush will accept, will he step up to the challenge? I don't think so, because based on the ETHS students I've met, and based on what I've heard on Rush's show, he would lose hands down.

Well, Aaron Hamilton probably said it best "It's not even worth responding to...He has nothing to say about my education and my future. He's just a guy talking on the radio."

Here is a letter from a former ETHS parent, to the Sun-Times:

"... My response? Mr. Limbaugh must still be on the OxyContin. In fact, I take his bizarre comments personally. Not only did my daughter . . . recently attend and graduate from ETHS (and then the University of Wisconsin, Madison), but also within the last 3 years, received her Master's in Education -- and now teaches U.S. history! -- to sophomores at Chicago Vocational High School, [a choice she made] . . . largely because of her ETHS experiences & its curriculum. And, as always, Rush's research is nonexistent. Many ETHS students live in Skokie, whose parents and grandparents were directly harmed by one Adolf Hitler. Perhaps Rush never heard about that little historical incident called the Holocaust, and how to this day it deeply affects the Evanston/ Skokie community?"

Read the letters here.

On a personal note, I find if deeply telling that this is only getting coverage from one of our local papers. The other one, the Chicago Tribune, the self described Republican paper, the one that loves to print articles by Victor Hansen Davis from the National Review, has narry a peep about this. I'm sure you are very surprised by that.