I recently had lunch with a group of people who are concerned about the problems that we’re having with public schools, and who wanted to discuss ways to do something about those problems.
Interestingly, the problem that they seemed most passionate about was the presence of pornographic books in school libraries.
It seems to me that having controversial books in a school library isn’t such a big deal if the kids in the school aren’t able to read the books anyway. Which, in a typical public school, is true for well over half the kids.
I didn’t get a chance to ask the following question, but I would be curious to hear how Grok readers would answer it:
Given a choice between
(1) a school in which 0.1% of the books in the library are pornographic, but in which more than 95% of the students are proficient in literacy and numeracy, or
(2) a school in which 0% of the books in the library are pornographic, but in which less than 40% of the students are proficient in literacy and numeracy,
which would you choose?
I wouldn’t hesitate to choose (1).
For me, the take-home message was that if the educational establishment wants to hide the fact (which is demonstrated by more than 50 years of data) that it has no idea how to actually teach kids to read, write, and reason, one of the most effective strategies available to it is to take controversial actions that will enrage — and thus engage, and ultimately distract — parents and citizens who want to ‘fix the schools’.
It’s a special case of the more general idea behind rope-a-dope politics.
That is, the establishment seduces parents and concerned citizens into wearing themselves out fighting over some fringe issues that affect a tiny number of students socially, while ignoring core issues that affect virtually every student academically.
Then, win or lose, the establishment gets to keep doing what it’s been doing — utterly failing to teach kids — while continuing to simultaneously escalate the costs to taxpayers and families, and the benefits to itself.
Once in a while, it may have to sacrifice a few administrative jobs (although far fewer than it’s gained), or amend a transgender policy that no one understood anyway, or remove a few books from a school library.
But so what? Those are just sacrificial pawns, more of which can be placed on the board at any time. The system itself — the one in which spending has more than tripled while achievement has flatlined — remains unthreatened.
As a strategy, it’s brilliantly simple, and devastatingly successful.
It’s not unlike the way some military planes, when under attack by heat-seeking missiles, release decoy flares. The heat of the flares attracts the missiles, leaving the planes and pilots intact and ready to fly another day.
The inclusion, in a school library, of a small number of possibly pornographic books is a decoy flare.
By giving activists a disposable issue to chase after, the plane and pilot — the educational establishment — remain intact and ready to fly another day.
How might things be different if the time, money, energy, and passion that are now being directed at questions like How are these books getting into school libraries? were directed instead at questions like Why aren’t these kids learning to read?
I hope someday we get a chance to find out.
