Shadows on the wall

A week ago someone mentioned at one of the LDV meetings that a few weeks earlier a phone survey was being conducted around Duluth about the schools and issues related to the Red Plan. Among other things people were being asked what they thought of Harry Welty. Other than the fact that LDV has no clue what this is all about it raises an interesting question. Presuming that the Red Plan side has financed this poll I’d be curious to know what if any information from the survey has been passed on to the school board incumbents who must face reelection? Presumably, since the incumbents have a great stake in that election, the survey results would have been disclosed to them. And that’s my question.

The philosopher Plato used a metaphor to describe some of the uncertainty we all face. He wrote about a cave with a fire in it and people on the other side of the fire who can not be seen but whose shadows being cast on the far wall of the cave by the fire can be seen. He suggested that like people gazing at those shadows we often don’t really know what those shadows represent.

Much of what goes on between the District and JCI is shrouded in mystery. All an outsider can see are the mysterious shadows cast on the far wall.

I certainly have no idea what the survey suggested the voting public thinks about the Red Plan or me or the School Board. I didn’t pay for it so it will remain a mystery. I can’t help but wonder, however, if the School Board incumbents who are critical to the Red Plan’s continued Juggernaut have been told anything about it either. For two years their supporters have told them they represent the majority of Duluth. How would the incumbents take it to learn otherwise? Perhaps, if the survey’s results were too dreadful, the keepers of the fire would prefer that their school board members be kept as ignorant of the survey’s results as the Red Plan’s opponents.

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