GEDANKENEXPERIMENT

The gendankenexperiment , or “thought experiment” is a term of science popularly associated with Albert Einstein’s notions of relativity. This, even though Ernst Mach was the first writer to use the term in popular science writing, and he himself picked up the term from Georg Lichtenberg from a century earlier. But as a concept rather than a term, the idea of imagining fantasy worlds in which to test situations goes back much farther. Germans dreaming of railway trains which move at the speed of light and infinite chains draped across frictionless corners all owe much to the Greek philosophers imagining how prisoners might interpret the shifting shadows cast upon their cave walls by the free creatures passing outside. Could the rational mind, from viewing only the hints of shadows, infer the reality? Is our ability to infer from scant clues innate, or learned. Plato's cave was among the first laboratory of the Gedankenexperiment. And ever since, we ask ourselves: how WOULD familiar things be different, if the world around us were fantastically different?

Cue the Rod Serling “Twilight Zone” music. Now, imagine, if you will a world very similar to our own, in which the Lancaster school district failed to persuade voters to pass a $93 million bond referendum in May. But this world is also very different. For in this GedankenExperimentWelt, the alternative-LISD board of trustees came back to its voters in September with a new smaller bond proposal. Instead of more than twice the amount just rejected, our imaginary board is holding a referendum on a bond less than half that previously proposed. Suppose, for a moment, we were discussing a $40 or $45 million dollar referendum.

What projects would be included? What would be omitted? What would our district do with a mere $45 million – barely over one fifth the amount begged in our reality?

Three elementary schools of $12 million would only require $36 million of the $45. Perhaps, in that alternate world, costs have increased even faster than in our own, and $12 Million would not buy a 660 seat school. So suppose these new proposed schools were forced to cut size – perhaps as small as 500 seats each. So, 1500 additional students could be educated in the GedankenExperimentWelt’s LISD.

These schools would, of course, require land to build upon. Perhaps the fantasy board would buy as many as four sites, planning ahead for additional schools in the future. Four elementary sites of 10 to 15 acres each might be expensive – as much as $15,000, even $16,000 per acre. That would commit another $1 million from the GedankenExperimentWelt Bond.

The athletes would still want a new bus or two to go back and forth for their games. The security troops would still want shiny new cop cars. The janitors and groundskeepers would still want new pickup trucks and their supervisors would, naturally, require new sedans to drive back and forth from school to school overseeing the work force. Suppose the fantasy board set aside another $2.5 million for vehicles.

This package has not yet totaled $40 million. Perhaps we can spare another million, then, for contingencies – if the price of a vehicle goes up; or a landowner holds out for a higher price for his site, or if steel prices ACTUALLY increase …

And still that fantasyland board has money left over. Perhaps a million could be spent in demonstrating how much better children learn if they carry laptops everywhere they go Perhaps another million in miscellaneous and unspecified “technology” – toys for the techies. And still, a million or so dollars might be left over for other pilot programs and demonstrations of competence – to gain the voter’s trust and to earn the respect of critics.

And what would those GedankenExperimentWelt critics be doing, while the district was out canvassing for votes on the $45 Million bond? Passing out flyers? Barraging the newspapers with letters to the editor? Digging for data – ANY data – to explain why the district needed so MUCH money; and wondering how much of the money would be wasted?

Blogging?

Or would the skeptics and critics of that fantasyland simply and quietly sit back and let the election happen? Would skeptics, perhaps, simply wait to see the administration succeed, or fail, on the projects and planned outlined? After all, even if that $45 Million fantasy bond passed, the fantasy district would have preserved for itself financial “cap room” – a reserve, a cushion, a fall back position, if necessary, for a new board, (if necessary) and a new superintendent ( as likely) to clean up the mess of any potential failure. If the risk of failure were not so high; if the cost of the experiment were not so great, why would the skeptics and critics bother to fight such an election?

Personally, I think it fascinating to consider how a smaller bond with more modest projects might have fared in this November’s election. Pity we’ll never get the chance to find out, in this world-based reality.