Asking The Right Questions
In Which: I talk about fatherhood and the Socratic method, News stories are covered in brief, and You learn how to ask all the right questions.
The City Council is still on hiatus until at least next week, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to say. Today’s story is an editorial that highlights how we approach news at the Herald and how we hope our readers do, too.
As a parent of a young child, I get asked a lot of questions. Questions both mundane and profound are asked of me daily—often to the point of frustration. “What are you doing?” my child asks, shoving their face in front of my laptop screen. “How does the stove heat up the water?” pulling my arm as I try to cook. “How much did our house cost?” as we walk through our complex to school. “Why are police allowed to kill people?” as we drive past HPD Headquarters on Winton. “Why do some people have a place to live and others don’t?” as we walk downtown to the local bookstore.
There are days when I don’t feel like answering questions because coming up with answers is a lot of work—especially in terms a child will understand. And it’s tempting to throw up my arms and tell her to stop asking questions—I’m trying to read for crying out loud! But something I read has kept me from shutting down her questions.
A tweet somewhere lost to the vastness of the internet said that although kids asking questions is annoying—and it definitely can be—it’s also an application of the Socratic method. For those who don’t know, it’s basically asking questions until you don’t have any more answers. The idea is to “[bring] out inadequacies and inconsistencies in beliefs.” This was applied to big philosophical ideas like virtues, but there’s no reason it can’t be used for day-to-day questions—as my child demonstrates every day.
Answering these questions has taught me a lot, and clued me in to how many news sites cover things. The 5 W’s of Journalism are supposed to inform how news is created, but does contemporary news really ask these questions enough? And if not, is there something you, as a reader, can do instead?
The Stories That You’re Given
With shrinking budgets and shortened attention spans, news coverage is often reduced to a clickbait headline or what will fit in 280 characters or less. Let’s take a look at a few recent stories.
The Hills of Los Angeles Are Burning
There are massive wildfires in Los Angeles. It’s still unclear—and mostly unimportant—what started the fires. But almost 140,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, the two largest fires are almost totally uncontained, and the insurance industry is predicting it to be the most expensive fire in US history—it’s expected to be over $8,000,000,000.
Climate change is directly linked to the increasing fires in California and Southern California has been having an exceptionally dry winter. But who is fighting the fires? Why was the budget for the LAFD cut this year? Where did that money go? What are we doing about Climate Change since it’s causing fires? Why are there so many homes on the urban-wildland interface and why do they mostly belong to rich people?
Shop With A Cop
In case you haven’t heard of it, Shop With A Cop is an event that many police departments host during the holidays where a police officer is paired with a child and they shop for toys together. The local one I caught included BART Police, Alameda County Sheriffs, and the Piedmont Police Department at the San Leandro Walmart, but it’s popular around the country.
But who is this event really for? Who is actually paying for this? How do they choose the children?
HUSD District Office Is Closed For Mold
A little thing that you may have heard about is that the HUSD District Office is closed right now—today it is because of the National Day of Mourning for the death of Jimmy Carter. But the School Board convened an emergency meeting on January 7th to close the District Office because of “fungal spores.”
This was because of repairs to the heating system that “resulted in water intrusion into the district office facility.” The people fixing the heaters caused water damage big enough to cause a mold problem. There was a 3 day delay between when the problem was detected and when the board took action.
Who was doing the repairs? How many staff were at risk? How much is this going to cost? Why is the building in such bad shape?
All The Right Questions
As you can see, the questions are slightly different for each story, but they all try to get at something a little deeper. It’s important to understand how these things work and why they happen—almost everything is a result of someone’s choice. And, just like the Socratic method intended, the answers can change your perspective.
Cops Don’t Fight Fires
Fires in California are fought by a number of firefighting agencies, so asking why the LAFD budget was cut by $17,500,000 is a good question the LA mayor won’t answer. Why did LAPD get a budget increase of $126,000,000? But fires are also frequently fought by incarcerated people, for pennies on the dollar, and they are then not allowed to apply for jobs as firefighters for years after their release. Why are we using prison labor to fight fires?
The cost of the fires is expected to be so high because they’re affecting mansions located at the urban wildland interface—regions which have regularly caught fire, especially in the LA area. Why are they allowing houses there? Why is LA still pumping oil and natural gas out of the ground even though it’s directly contributing to the severity of these fires? Why is LA so car-dependent when cars are also causing these climate-related disasters?
Controlled burns and planting native vegetation have been shown to reduce the severity of wildfires and increase biodiversity. What is LA—and California at large—doing to prevent fires from happening?
Polishing The Badge
Shop With A Cop isn’t for the kids, it’s for the police. According to a former police officer who runs Criminal Justice Evolution,
By participating in the program, children gain a positive experience with police officers, officers get to bond with the children and give them a different perspective on the role of police in a local community. Since the children involved in the Shop with a Cop program do not always have positive impressions or experiences with police, it also allows them to develop fond memories of the officers and helps them develop trust with law enforcement officials.
Although yes, the kid does get some toys, the primary function—especially all the media attention—is to reform the image of police in the minds of those most harmed by them. Why does their image need reform? Why do we have a whole Social Media staffer within HPD?
And the money rarely comes from the police officers themselves. The BART Police event was funded by the community—some donations may have come from individual officers, but the majority came from BART PD-led fundraisers. It’s also common for local businesses to fund it with gift certificates. So why are the police even there? Why are they in uniform the whole time?
A History of Neglect
All HUSD facilities face a similar problem: they were built in the 50’s and never designed to last this long. On top of that, the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978 resulted in decreased revenue for schools while, at the same time, Federal funding for public education is at an all-time low.
There are also issues with how schools are funded by property taxes in the first place, since it entrenches poverty in poorer areas, how private schools draw off enrollment that costs the district millions of dollars a year, and a long-term demographic change where there are simply fewer children thanks to fewer births and rising cost of living.
But each of those factors also deserve their own questions—why is the cost of living going up so much? Why do we pay for schools with local property taxes? How many potential HUSD students are lost to private schools? What are we doing to address funding amid declining birthrates?
Always More Questions
As you can see, questions usually lead to even more questions, but even starting to think critically about what’s happening in the news can lead to new insight. And although big events get a lot of coverage—there will be a lot of scrutiny on the LA fires—everything deserves the same amount of questioning.
Some questions that are good to have in the back of your mind when reading the news are:
Why is this happening?
Who benefits from this?
Who is paying for this?
The answers are always more complicated than they seem and there’s always more to know.
There’s a story that often gets told about sea stars washing up on the beach. In this story, a whole beach is covered with washed-up sea stars and a young child is picking them up one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. The adult asks the kid why they’re doing it. You’ll never get them all, so it won’t matter. The kid throws another sea star in and says, “It matters to that one.”
It’s a very touching story, but I want to live in a world where people ask, “Why is the beach covered in sea stars?” After finding the answer, we can work together to make sure that sea stars never wash up on the beach in the first place.
Have a good weekend.
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