Dr. Science and the school board. GK Chesterton. The computer cometh. Bughouse Square. And yet more school board meetings. All as told in . . .

. . . Blithe Spirit No. 57, April 9, 1997. Two Cents and worth it.

Data, data, who's got it? . . .

Dr. Science came to the Oak Park [IL] elementary school board this week. He is like another scientist, the much-travelled Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame, of whom it was said that the difference between him and God the Father was that God the Father was everywhere, Fr. Hesburgh was everywhere but Notre Dame. Dr. Science is everywhere but home, it would seem, at school board meeting time anyhow.

He is currently dedicated to urging the high school and elementary boards on one overarching issue: data-gathering. The Tom Cruise sports agent character in the recent hit movie asks, "Where's the money?" Dr. Science asks, "Where's the data?"

He wants the two districts to crunch numbers on student achievement, as he once wanted the high school to crunch them on student discipline cases, when he seemed certain that black kids were being unfairly put upon by racist teachers, etc. Now it's achievement. He apparently doesn't believe grades or test scores or teacher testimony. If you don't talk (spout) statistics at him, he isn't listening.

Neither does he want to hear of any get-tough program, which he called "masculine" at the elementary board meeting April 9. [I want a lot of Mercy Sisters to hear about that.] By meeting's end, he had the board vowing to cleanse their programs of "the m-word" ("meanness"). He also had them deferring to him repeatedly, citing comments by him, eliciting from him repeated chuckles. This was Dr. Science's night at the school board races, indeed.

To what end, my friend? . . .

But he was never asked what difference this data collection will make to Teacher A and pupils in fourth grade or sixth or eighth. Will Teacher A (a) be inspired by the data to teach in more dedicated fashion or (b) be given a new curriculum scientifically devised from Dr. Science's collection?

Dr. S. has spoken condescendingly to high-school board and staff (and delivered a sideswipe in absentia at this elementary board meeting), implying insouciance on their part in these matters. (Not "implicating" this, by the way, as one of the elementary board members used the word several times in another context the other night, as if identifying murder suspects.)

Indeed, in a sort of between-us-chickens comment to the elementary board, he spoke of the high school board as requiring more reminders than they about data collection. A wry grin accompanied this, though no chuckle that I could catch.

You think you know what you're doing, but you don't, because you don't have the data, he says in effect. WHERE'S THE DATA?

Diplomacy and taxes . . .

The elementary board is as smooth as glass in such matters. They are something to watch, in fact -- soothing and reasonable and apparently smart -- or are getting smart. This week's meeting showed none of the giddiness and nervous hilarity that has marked other meetings. They talked not badly but too much. But their loquacity was generally pegged to easing their comments through, which has its merits, I must confess. All in all, they make easy listening, which hasn't always been the case, with this or other elementary boards.

The supt. was concise. He reported what he'd heard about school funding from a pol, namely that you shouldn't tell lawmakers you need money but that you are ready to pay more income tax. Like too many liberals, the board members were going on about how right is their cause and implying that legislators were gutless and cruel -- thus implicating them in school money problems.

The supt., on the other hand, injected a bit of realism: the issue is not selling schools but taxes. I ask: Will the board work up a phone tree of callers wanting to pay more income tax? Will they themselves run on that platform next time around? Do they recommend that to legislators? Have they forgotten what happened to the late Richard Ogilvie, a Republican governor and father of the state income tax? Do they know what happened?

We still circle the issue of data collection, do we not? Will the board run with that on their platform without explaining what difference it makes and how it will help kids learn how to read, write, and count? Having turned the collection results over to Dr. Science, who has been neither hired nor elected?

Talking up a lull . . .

Explaining it might be a problem. They are verbal to a fault. They come out of academic committees, where the knives are kept hidden under scholarly togas, and all sorts of other committees, from the League of Women Voters to your local, loquacious Parent Teacher Organization.

Plain, crisp talk? Forget it. It's jarring, for one thing. And to call a supposed community representative on his premises is to risk having to haul him off your premises when he refuses to shut up, as Dr. Science has refused before the high school board, which doesn't make him chuckle much if at all.

So a board may be well advised to be verbose and full of body language -- though the best of them barely moved a muscle while spinning tales of legislative funding and lack thereof, or later when she took issue with another board member who questioned the latest district direction. Nicely done, actually, by both. A little public disagreement adds to the patina of credibility. But where's the asking what difference it makes if they don't answer the question, "Where's the data?"

Chesterton, my Chesterton . . .

Two nights after this meeting, a happy, or at least hardy, few gathered for a meeting of the Chesterton Society, to which I traveled miles on a dark and stormy night with friend John.

GK Chesterton, if you don't know, was a headliner among Catholic journalist-intellectuals before and after World War I. He was English and teamed with the crusty Hilaire Belloc, also English and also Catholic, though of a more combative nature.

GK was a sweetie, portly and bespectacled and three-piece-suited in his usual pictures. He wrote novels, Father Brown detective stories, poetry, and lots of essays. The informal essay was his metier. He would push or nudge a topic along or seem to sideswipe it on his way somewhere else. Never one to hit you over the head, he was nonetheless a polemicist, speaking for eternal or at least longstanding verities while promoting "distributism," a sort of medieval socialism.

Complexes compounded . . .

We five were to discuss what he wrote about eugenics laws intended to reduce the poor population in England in the 1920s. They were not passed and seem to have represented a dying gasp of raw social Darwinism, unless you count how Mao and friends punished parturition 30 years later in Red China.

But on the way to Chesterton, we were shanghaied by one of us, who launched preemptive strikes in favor of capitalism, then by another who launched equally explosive counterattacks. Before long, we were in a sort of Flat Earth Society brouhaha.

It was a lesser version of the College of Complexes, an indoor Bughouse Square held in the back of a North Side bar. I talked there once, standing in for the Sun-Times religion editor to discuss Cardinal Cody, then alleged by the Sun-Times to have spent other people's money on a woman friend.

That was enough to fill an evening, you would think. But Cody got lost in the shuffle (an earthy defender said he deserved to have his "ashes hauled" like the rest of us), in favor of arguing about neo-fascist conspiracies. Likewise did Chesterton become a springboard for things one could argue without ever reading him, or hearing of him, for that matter.

Doctor Who? . . .

Returning to Dr. Science and the Great Data Gathering, one should note how his warm welcome by the elementary board contrasts with their response to another speaker a few months before who warned against excessive reliance on computers.

The board was being introduced to a new web site for the district and was being told how wonderful were "virtual schooling" and "virtual community." The speaker was a former (3-term) board member. He spoke in measured tones and terms.

No matter. What he said -- don't forget the basics of reading, etc. in your enthusiasm for computers and the Internet -- splashed a teeny bit of cold water. Not only did they not reply to him at all, but in one of the more embarrassing moments of school-board meeting history, one of them addressed him as "Doctor," using his name when he meant to use that of a local professor who had helped create and introduce the web site.

"I'm no doctor," protested the speaker, who sat in the board member's line of gaze.

There followed a long, painful pause, while the irritated boardie regrouped. Then without a word of apology to the speaker, he put his question to the real Doctor -- lobbing a fat one down the middle that he powdered. And on went the meeting.