Quake mania

Originally published December 2, 1990, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.        

Koshkonong won't be having school on Dec. 3.  A front‑page story in the West Plains Daily Quill, my paper of record down here in southern Missouri, announced the school board's decision.  On the basis of Iben Browning's well‑publicized prediction of an earthquake on or about that date and the consequent concern of parents, classes are canceled for the fateful Monday next month.

            "An early spring break," Superintendent Darrell Cook called the one‑day leave‑of‑absence.  What they're really taking leave of is their senses.  Today they take the word of a climatologist from New Mexico.  Will tommorow they consult a cosmetologist from Ohio?  I have to suppress the hope that an earthquake will strike on Dec. 6, after everyone has returned to school confident of his safety.

            My interest in this decision is not merely academic, though it is decidedly that, in more ways than one.  My wife teaches high school English in Koshkonong and won't be going to work on Dec. 3 now.  Instead she'll spend President's Day in the classroom come February.

            Koshkonong is not alone in taking this action.  Other schools in Missouri and Arkansas, most of them closer to the New Madrid Fault, will also be shutting down, and I don't want to ridicule the decision.  OK, yes I do.  But in the name of constructive ridicule, I have an alternate plan.

            Schools are in the business of imparting knowledge and developing the ability to use that knowledge.  So let's seize upon this opportunity to teach the kids of Koshkonong and everywhere else in the Hysteria Zone a real‑life lesson with the tools of education:  knowledge, reason and truth.

            First, hold classes but make them voluntary.  Anyone who wishes to expressly exhibit his or her ignorance may stay home and let the world know just how smart they are.  Second, the day's curricula should be given over to the study of earthquakes and the frenzy that has resulted from Mr. Browning's prediction.

            In science, students will learn about geology.  The teacher will be careful to point out this discipline's difference from climatology.  "Can Willard Scott predict earthquakes?" the science teacher might ask.

            History classes will focus on instances of mass hysteria in the past.  Maybe they will listen to tapes of "The War of the Worlds," or the hearings of Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

            The zoology teacher will take lemmings as the day's subject.

            In civics the students will debate what constitutes proper reasoning for public policy.  Some school boards have based their decisions to close on the fact that many children will not come to school anyway.  Perhaps, then, we should reconsider our laws on marijuana use, since many people smoke the illegal drug anyway.

            Statistical analysis will be covered in math class.  These students will learn why insurance companies are so eager to take earthquake premiums from their customers.

            English students will read the works of Mark Twain, a man familiar with hoaxes.  His characters Tom and Huck were both thought dead prematurely and the author himself was reported dead by the Associated Press while he was still quite alive.  This is also the man who wrote, "there are lies, damn lies and statistics."

            Perhaps a foot of snow will fall on Dec. 2 and the whole issue will be moot.  Maybe there really will be an earthquake and the school board members can congratulate themselves for great wisdom.

Only if that snow falls in hell.