Edudopia

It's school board election season here in my little county. Since my shackles were struck off at the beginning of this year, I've dipped only the occasional toe in local politics. I told myself I deserved a break from meetings, at any rate, and even skipped a candidates' forum that a year ago I'd have felt obligated to attend.

Still, with the election date approaching in a week, I broke down and watched a 2-hour video of a candidates forum. Yikes. School board elections draw some pudding-headed candidates, don't they? Luckily the choice this year was a little better defined than last year, when it was hard to distinguish among the candidates at all. One incumbent seems like a reasonably solid guy, while his challenger couldn't even manage to field the basic "Are you willing to assure us you'll have no truck at all with any CRT or gender-affirming nonsense?" The challenger went down the usual rabbit trail about law school curricula and affecting not to understand what the questioner was concerned about.

The two guys I plan to vote for (out of 5 candidates for two board slots) both came right out and said CRT and gender-affirmation had no place in the schools. One deftly avoided arguing about what CRT technically means and whether it's technically taught in public schools by simply saying people should be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. The other said it was pure garbage that he had no patience with. Both clearly were focused on academic excellence and were capable of formulating reasonably clear sentences. Best I can expect!

The challenger with the depressing CRT answer also assured us solemnly that the science has established that childish brains are biologically unsuited to learning to read before the age of 6 or 7. It follows, therefore, that we should spend more money on early childhood development, which should consist entirely of play. All I hear when someone talks that way is "Increase our budget, because it's not our fault that the effort is futile and the money is wasted." Not that I want to browbeat very young children into learning to read if they happen not to be ready, but then why are we spending education tax revenues on their playcare? It's the same reaction I have when people explain to me that it's not a school's fault when revenues per student are doubled but no one's learning improves. Granted that it may not be the school's fault what's going on in the kids' home lives, but the fact remains that we're throwing money away on techniques that even their loyal proponents don't think are working. It's as if the point of the school were to be a playground, not so much for the kids, as for the people pursuing hobbies in childhood development studies.

I wrote up the 2-hour discussion to the limit of my ability to decipher what they were trying to say, and to the limit of my patience ("I've had my patience tested, and it was 'negative'!"). This morning the "I don't know what CRT is" candidate complained in a comment to my post that I'd misunderstood certain parts of her fragmentary answers. No doubt; I responded that it was good that she'd read my summary and had carte blanche to add to or correct my rendition right there in the comments section. She explained solemnly how people often doubt her views on the appropriate age to learn to read, basing their erroneous opinions on their own experience instead of on the science. No need for me to respond; that's a campaign ad for her opponent, as I see it. I was probably a little brusque in my summary of what I took to be her views, but I actually left out the worst part, fearing I was not understanding her words and not wanting to embarrass her. I could have sworn that, when asked her views on the proper role of parents, she answered that parents were important, because if they didn't produce the kids, the schools would have no one to work with. She managed to get out the statement that parents were "partners," and I left it at that.

Were schools run by nimcompoops when I was a kid, and I just didn't have the opportunity to see it? I could swear that most of my teachers and administrators had more on the ball. Of course I have no idea what was going on at the school board meetings, which probably would have curled my toes. At least they didn't try to make me wait until I was 7 years old to learn to read, for pity's sake, not that it would have mattered. My family taught me to read before I ever walked into a schoolroom, without inflicting any evident cognitive damage. Perhaps today that would be grounds for a CPS intervention, or penalties for practicing education without a license and a union card.