With the web and myriad podcasting, oral discernment is also a skill learners need. The late Charlie Kirk used multiple ways of biasing his "debates" in his favor, including such a simple thing as having his mic louder so that his interruptions of others were stronger. There was more, content and viewpoint shifting, and all, but now oral learning and literacy skills, including a hoped for ability at discernment of true and false, are fundamental skills in the Internet Age.
Rote learning and blind acceptance of policy argument are of far lesser importance. Making students more amenable to propaganda serves no useful purpose whatsoever. Or at least that is the Crabgrass outlook. Moreover, one of the most disastrous "schooling" approaches is to have biases and to suggest cirricula should from infancy onward be reinforcing of any one view of a one true way, or us and them constraint to where diversity is viewed as a superior/inferior dichotomy.
There is some science to learning. This part of the post will be selective, not aiming at treatise length but at giving some sense of where we are today. The aim is toward a general public awareness that more may be known than thought to be the case. So a sampling of stuff Crabgrass found interesting -
Frontiers - How does literacy break mirror invariance in the visual system?
Brain Pathways - Researchgate.net - Same consideration.
Try the search =Brain pathways for mirror discrimination learning during literacy acquisition
Texas Center for Learning Disabilities - July 2015: Behavioral and Cerebral Changes Induced by Reading Acquisition (This is of special interest here because the blog author suffers as a slow reader, possibly with dyslexia which was not a consideration back during my early schooling, with more knowledge having accumulated since then)
The journal, SCIENCE - which seems to be pivotal to the question of brain adaptation upon literacy acquisition, with the entire pdf of the eleven page item available online here
NATURE, here, here and here, showing specific lines of professional inquiry
Last - Google Scholar, linking to an online available 265p text, "Orality and Literacy," with the GS tag:
Walter J. Ong’s classic work provides a fascinating insight into the social effects of oral, written, printed and electronic technologies, and their impact on philosophical, theological, scientific and literary thought. This thirtieth anniversary edition – coinciding with Ong’s centenary year – reproduces his best-known and most influential book in full and brings it up to date with two new exploratory essays by cultural writer and critic John Hartley. Hartley provides: A scene-setting chapter that situates Ong’s work within the historical and disciplinary context of post-war Americanism and the rise of communication and media studies; A closing chapter that follows up Ong’s work on orality and literacy in relation to evolving media forms, with a discussion of recent criticisms of Ong’s approach, and an assessment of his concept of the ‘evolution of consciousness’; Extensive references to recent scholarship on orality, literacy and the study of knowledge technologies, tracing changes in how we know what we know. These illuminating essays contextualize Ong within recent intellectual history, and display his work’s continuing force in the ongoing study of the relationship between literature and the media, as well as that of psychology, education and sociological thought.
(cited by over 25,000 other works, so that the return list of those will ground you well, as far as you go)
The above is a deep dive into a narrowly constrained single question of brain change, something most readers likely never thought to consider in an ordered way, before. Representative of concentrated knowledge professions can acquire beyond the general knowledge of the average smart person's understandings.
There is then actual brain science that specialists in learning may know much more about that the average person off the street, whatever that person's politics may be, there is science.
Why even post of this in what is mainly an argumentative and policy oriented blog? Because school boards impose policy by selection of senior administrative personnel, which percolates into classroom teacher HR biaes, and to whether students are indoctrinated or educated.
Board candidates favoring indoctrination are a public concern, where those wanting that can make strong arguments to certian mindsets, but where the aim always, in Minnesota at least, has a Constitutional aim to demanding public education for all young persons, The Minnesota State Constitution stating:
ARTICLE XIII
MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS
Section 1. Uniform system of public schools.
The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. The legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state.
Sec. 2. Prohibition as to aiding sectarian school.
In no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular Christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.
Sec. 3. University of Minnesota.
All the rights, immunities, franchises and endowments heretofore granted or conferred upon the University of Minnesota are perpetuated unto the university.
As to the above Sec. 2, there is federal judicial interpretation which is a separate story altogether, but saying it is at play is sufficient for this presentation, and other places and opinions are out there. That is enough for here and now. Knight of Malta Lenard Leo has had a hand in top court judicial appointments, and whether that is a good or bad thing can be the subject of discourse apart from this post.
The focus here is that the University is so important that at the dawn of statehood it got due consideration, and that public schooling was appended to the somewhat vain hope for "intelligence of the people" in order that "a republican form of government depending mainly upon" such intelligence eisting and being tuned by public education so that a representative form of government might best prosper.
The dimensions thought most significant when the Constitution was passed - public education being a most important goal aimed to be: general and uniform, systemic, thourough and efficient, were noted, yet where local control of multiple local school boards often leads to such high goals falling to doctrinal minds, in error, and leading to less than best for the students.
The Anoka- Hennepin School District election day is this coming Tuesday; Nov. 4, 2025. For Election Day guidance see MN Sec of State website, here. Voting during regular hours, Monday, Nov 3, at County Hall in Anoka is an option - the sole remaining early voting day left. Either way, inform yourselves about candidates to vote intelligently.
That is the district I live in, sub-district 4, of six districts, three on the ballot, within the overall District itself. I took advantage of early voting already, and voted for Abbey Payeur, in my mind the better candidate of two. The more capable person.
So policy among voters matters. The aim in school board elections should be best educational outcome, and not constraining students to be channeled to become like bottom feeding flounder fish, with both eyes on one side so as to only see one side but not the other. The problem is that doctrinal minds, when elected, can say the aim is "best education" while the outcome can be production of generations of flounders.
Hint: If uncertain - Go with the professionals, those trained and knowing, for the best chance of reaching the high aims of the Constitution. Those who study and practice the profession become better able to apply brain science to schooling, and generally are a better voting risk than those having solely an ideology to sell. How you tell the difference with a ballot ,in hand, good luck. Learn who is who. Try your best to be informed and wise, as best as you can. And not, yourself, locked into any rigid belief system - any doctrine - in judging candidates.
-----------------------------
There is an online voter guide: https://www.edmnvotes.org/voter-guide/
It gives endorsements for all Metro Twin City area school boards having elections this Tuesday.
From educators to the public. Study and practice of education leads to a .better fitness to give Board election advice. View it that way. Enjoy your ballot. It's the only school ballot you get this year.