Dear Principal Carr,

My name is Tim Kuhn, a graduate of North Harford High School, class of 2006. I implore you, as an alumnus of the high school, to implement major changes to the way that multicultural education is taught throughout a student’s four years in the school.

This letter is being written during the national fall out of the white supremacist takeover of Charlottesville, Va. The discussions I’ve had in real life and online with old classmates and acquaintances from Harford County have been abysmal: reactions ranging from an unconditional support of a white supremacist ethno-state to denials that KKK and Nazi sympathizers are even racist to an utter indifference about the situation entirely. The common throughline between all of these conversations is our attendance of North Harford, implicating the school’s teaching of historical events and cultural studies as being subpar and ineffectual.

I am writing you as part of a coordinated campaign of roughly 50 other concerned NHHS alumni, all who’ve come to appreciate and grasp the dark truths of our country’s history through outside means: moving out of the county to attend college; traveling around and outside of America; or by simply having one of the many stigmatized characteristics that draw the ire of our cultural heritage.

I don’t have a background in education or curriculum design, but I am moreso writing as a call to action for you to find the resources that do. These conversations need to be occurring at a much younger age, but, at minimum, NHHS should adapt and require students to take a class on cultural sensitivity. The homogeneity of the student population provides very little exposure to people of different races, cultures and belief systems. Students are then left to understand other people’s experiences through stereotypes and the rhetoric of disingenuous political figures rampantly spreading fear and division for personal gain.

These changes would’ve been crucial for me, personally, during my time walking the halls of the school. I went on to choose a college that had the previous year gone from being an all-girls school to a co-educational one. The sole factor in that decision was the belief that a majority female environment would turn me into a straight man out of necessity. I quickly found out that that was not the case, and, in a moment of panic, I attempted suicide within my first semester.

To be clear, this letter is not to condemn HCPS, but rather to work together with the school system in building a more compassionate and inclusive community that can serve as a force of good in this country.

I can attest to the importance of cultural sensitivity and its potential to save lives. I may not have been so isolated and afraid about who I was had there been any resources available for struggling gay teens at my high school, and, as an adult, I would probably feel more comfortable returning back home to the county with my husband if my old classmates had had these resources growing up as well.

We can and must make Harford County a better place for all it’s residents, and it starts with how we teach our children.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Tim Kuhn
Sr. Analyst
National Aeronautics and Space Administration